Tsunami Disaster Relief

AVAR is extremely grateful to the following veterinary professionals who donated their time to assist with our tsunami relief efforts: Drs. Richard Bachman, Kerry Levin, Donna Blasko, Sara Winikoff and Bosmat Gal; and Michael Bannasch, RVT. We would also like to thank the following organizations for their generous financial support of this relief effort: United Animal Nations, Best Friends Animal Society, New England Anti-Vivisection Society and the Animal Rescue League of Boston. (See below for updates.)


AVAR Team Returns to India to Provide Long-Term

Aid to Animal Shelters Impacted by Tsunami


An AVAR team returned to India in May 2005 to provide follow-up assistance to two animal shelters assisted by AVAR in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami earlier this year.

Dr. Richard Bachman, AVAR’s shelter medicine consultant, and Michael Bannasch, a registered veterinary technician who is coordinator for the Shelter Medicine Program at UC Davis, spent approximately 10 days with the Visakha SPCA in Visakhaptnam, with the goal of improving shelter protocols and upgrading shelter equipment. Dr. Bachman also traveled to Chennai for a two-day initial consultation with the Blue Cross of India and will return for a more comprehensive consultation within a few months.

Despite brutally hot and humid conditions, Bachman and Bannasch worked side by side with Visakha SPCA President Pradeep Nath for more than 12 hours each day to improve the medical care offered to the approximately 700 animals (dogs, cats, cattle and other species) living at the shelter. The mission, sponsored by Sacramento-based United Animal Nations, also provided new equipment and medical supplies to the shelter.

According to Bachman, the primary accomplishments of the May mission include:

  • Improving anesthetic protocols for all animals sterilized by the Visakha SPCA. That included revamping the injectable anesthetic protocol to allow for quicker recovery of street dogs sterilized by the Visakha SPCA. (The VSPCA plans to start mobile spay/neuter operations in area villages.) The AVAR team also supplied and trained the Visakha SPCA staff in the use of a new gas anesthesia machine.
  • Developing better sanitation protocols for the entire shelter and improving animal intake/animal traffic flow to improve disease control and prevention. The AVAR team also worked with the Visakha SPCA to introduce a new vaccination program that will control the spread of distemper and parvo, both a major problem in the area.
  • Introducing diagnostic capabilities with the use of a microscope, centrifuge, and veterinary textbooks provided to the shelter. The shelter will now be able to differentiate between skin diseases and check for problems with various parasites.
  • Improving surgical aseptic techniques, including providing the shelter with a new autoclave.
  • Helping provide better surgical aftercare for the animals, including purchasing pads that the dogs can recover on (as opposed to lying on the cement floors after surgery).

Dr. Bachman said he was impressed with the willingness of the Visakha SPCA staff to adapt to new protocols to provide better care for the animals. The focus of the mission, Bachman added, was to offer them sustainable protocols that could continue with supplies and resources available in country.

Bachman said the mission also had to take into account cultural differences, including the fact that the Visakha SPCA (and most animal shelters in India) will only euthanize animals under very extreme conditions. “Euthanasia is not considered a strategy, for example, to resolve a disease outbreak,” said Bachman. “We needed to help them develop other ways to implement disease control.”

Upon their return to the United States, Visakha SPCA President Pradeep Nath offered his thanks to the AVAR team referring to them as the “Rick-Mike Wonder.” “The tsunami has brought along with miseries many good things and this has been one of them,” Nath wrote, adding that his dream of standardizing care for animals cared at his shelter is finally coming to fruition.

Some notes from Mike Bannasch, RVT, while at VSPCA ....

Rick and I feel that we have made significant progress here, The staff of the SPCA are an amazing group of deeply dedicated animal lovers who work tirelessly to improve the health of the animals. However, they are unaware of the basic concepts of infectious disease control and proper management of their shelter population, which hovers around 700 animals. After several days of observing how the flow of animals into and out of the shelter proceeded Rick and I felt that we could make significant changes that would be of benefit to the animals. We created a plan to rearrange the shelter population into separate "wards:" the ABC ward (for street dogs brought in for spay and neuter), the quarantine ward, the shelter dog ward, the maternity ward, and the puppy ward.

Pradeep the shelter director is obviously a man of action. As part of our infectious disease control recommendation to Pradeep, we suggested that a wall separating the Quarantine dogs from the general population be built some day; construction started the next morning and two days later and the wall is near completion!

During the past week, Rick and I have introduced the difficult concept of gas anesthesia. The introduction of this surgical tool along with adjustments made to their pre-anesthetic protocol has significantly reduced recovery time for the animals. Quicker recovery means quicker release and ultimately this will allow for more animals to be spayed and neutered. The staff are becoming more and more comfortable with the technique and according to Pradeep once the staff is ready, the VSPCA will take the show on the road to the more than 2000 costal villages near Visakhapatnam where they will set up mobile spay and neuter camps.

Finally, I have spent my "free Time" scrounging around the lab to see what is available for them to use. I have set up a rudimentary lab, which we have already used to identify the external parasites on some of the shelter dogs. I have been teaching staff members how to use the microscope to help the diagnosis of parvo and panleukopenia, and how to perform fecal examination of both their small and large animal populations. I have taught them basic lab skills and have encouraged them to look up more advanced procedures in my diagnostic testing book {which of course is theirs now}. The staff are very encouraged and full of energy and they have begun plans for scheduled screening of the population. In addition, they are constantly approaching me with questions about diagnostic procedures that they hope to implement in the near future. I will spend my remaining days here reviewing lab procedures with the staff and overseeing their new lab.