Beth Bryant and Penny Burrows spent two weeks volunteering in Luxor, Egypt in October 2024. Beth and Penny share their experience of volunteering. Animal Care in Egypt (ACE) was set up in 2000 – it initially started out as a charity project that allowed local horse and donkey owners to wash their horses in wash bays, and by 2006 had grown to a veterinary clinic with both in-patient and out-patient facilities for equine patients and small animal patients.
Luxor, home to Tutankhamun (amongst others in the Valley of the Kings), is a city based on the Nile in Egypt. The equid population consists mostly of carriage horses (mainly for tourists but also used by locals), dancing horses, and working donkeys (that are mostly used for pulling farm carts loaded with sugar cane). There is also the occasional pet or riding horse.
We were welcomed by the ACE team at Luxor airport and driven to ACE – we were expecting it to be hot, but arriving at 1am thought our room would be slightly cooler than 38o! The following morning, we met the team of Egyptian vets led by Dr Assma. We got stuck in helping where we could. Each day had a similar routine – 8am morning checks on in-patients (usually around 20 patients), 8:30am rounds, and then the team work through all the necessary tasks e.g. bandage changes and wound flushes of the in-patients. Once the in-patients were sorted for the day, we all re-grouped in the out-patient clinic which was frequently busy! Between 8-12 and 1-5pm, anyone is able to either walk their horse or donkey in to the clinic, or drive in (usually in the back of an open-top truck or Tuk Tuk!). They can help themselves to sand pens to allow their horse or donkey to have a roll, and wash bays to clean up and cool off.
We stopped for a break everyday between 12-1pm – this was quite a treat for us! Someone from the clinic would go and collect lunch for everyone and we used this opportunity to go and hide in the air-con to cool off. We have now eaten a lifetime supply of falafel flatbreads, feteel (with apricot jam / cheese), and koshiri (an Egyptian special – rice, macaroni, spaghetti, lentils and crispy onions combined in a bowl with a tomato and chilli sauce).
The afternoon would mostly be spent seeing cases in the out-patient clinic. We saw a huge number of wounds but they were often 3-5 days old – rope wounds, harness wounds, trauma from RTAs etc. We also saw a significant number of large abscesses either on the neck or on the gluteal region – there is no restriction on owners purchasing medication in pharmacies within Egypt, so commonly owners will inject an array of medication IM (often with the same needle resulting in abscessation!). These varied from mild to severe, resulting in septic shock and death in some cases – it was quite alarming for us! Foot injuries were common due to working on uneven roads / surfaces, and although we saw a lot of subsolar abscesses, these tended to be within the sole rather than on the white line which differed to our population at home. Impaction colics were common due to the extreme heat and dry diet – thankfully most could be treated as out-patients with daily stomach tubing and dietary restrictions. There is an unfortunate trend of owners assuming some colic cases require furosemide (which is unfortunately able to be purchased at any pharmacy!) - we saw 3 or 4 of these in the clinic that not only arrive in significant pain, but also with significant fluid deficits.
What we were not prepared for was the number of serious wounds / fractures caused by donkey bites! On our first morning, we met two inpatients – one which had been bitten on its neck removing half of the wing of the axis, and another which had lost a few DSPs from a bite! This only added to our slight fear of rabid cases, and it wasn’t until our second week that we saw our first case of rabies in a donkey that – although only in the early stages – was starting to self-mutilate his hindlimbs. The vets at ACE were quick to act and ensure everyone was in appropriate PPE and the donkey was euthanased.
As part of the upskilling project, we wanted to help in any area that we could. We had prepared lectures on the medical management of colic, and neonatal foal medicine which were gratefully received, although did jinx us as we immediately started seeing numerous colic and foal cases! We were also keen to get the Egyptian vets using their imaging modalities more frequently – with a CR X-ray kit and ultrasound machine, we used any opportunity where it was deemed sensible to help in these areas. We had also prepared a laminated booklet to help with abdominal scanning of colic cases to help some of the younger vets there.
Whilst in Luxor, we managed to get out and do some sight-seeing as well as working within the clinic. We enjoyed a tour of the ancient sites on the West Bank – Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut’s Temple and our guide recommended visiting the Valley of the Workers in the first week. In the second week we visited the temples on the East Bank. Luxor really is the heart of Ancient Egypt and we thoroughly enjoyed learning about its history.
This was our first BEVA Trust trip and our first time volunteering or working abroad. It was a humbling experience and made us thankful for so many things that we have available to us in the UK. We saw things that will likely live with us forever – for example, watching a recumbent colicking horse get tipped out of a truck onto the floor in a heap, several neurological cases of EHV, rabid cases, and wounds larger than you can imagine. We also saw how a team can pull together in a non-judgemental way, and just help an animal. If wounds were inflicted because of violence, emotions were put aside. The team at ACE welcomed any case so owners felt they could always reach out for help.
We want to thank the team at ACE; Kim Taylor and Helen Collins for helping organise the trip; the team of Egyptian vets for helping us get stuck in, translating, and making us feel very welcome – Dr Assma, Dr Saleh, Dr Paula, Dr Abdullah and Dr David. Sakia for keeping ACE homely and George for driving us around Luxor each day! Also a massive thanks to Leaya at BEVA for making this trip happen!