Although it has proved impossible for me to compare access to veterinarians between Pakistan and for example the UK, based on what Ahsan has hinted at, it appears that there is a need in Pakistan for more veterinarians and a need for veterinarians to focus more on companion domestic animals as well as farm livestock.
M. AFZAL of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Islamabad, Pakistan in 2009 recommended a new legal framework for veterinary services in the country. He also states that vaccination manufacture is poor. The Pakistan Veterinary Medical Council does not have a website.
Because there appears to be a real demand for vets and improved cat (and companion animal) health care it may be wise to create a new sort of qualification, the “Veterinarian Assistant”. The veterinarian assistant would be trained to the same standard as a veterinarian.
The difference would be that he or she would be trained to do less treatments and diagnostic work. He would be trained to do vaccinations for instance and diagnosis and treatment of the most common feline illnesses such infections by feline herpes virus and calicivirus, FIP, FIV and FeLV together with treatments for fleas and worms. These are the most common and the diagnosis and treatments for these ailments are well established.
Because the training would be limited, it would be shorter and therefore cheaper. This would encourage more students which in turn would result in more “limited services veterinary clinics” especially in areas where there are currently very few. The services should be cheaper too as the overheads in running a reduced down service would be lower.
The reason why I am suggesting this new job specification is because where there is a need for improved cat care at a basic level there is less of a need for a fully qualified vet and more of a need for someone who is accessible who can provide basic cat health care.
If you can believe what you read about China, its improvement in the standard of living for many people is giving rise to a concern for animals that didn’t exist before the rise of the middle and moneyed classes. China’s young generation is forming animal rights protest groups where there were none before – though it’s true new concepts do not take hold overnight. The same may occur in Pakistan.
Para-professional training in this country is a hot career path. In spite of the new ‘Obama Care’ health plan, medical costs are on the rise every year. According to a radio newscast this morning, a family of four is shelling out more than $16,000 annually for medical coverage – and even that won’t protect them from still more thousands in ‘out-of-pocket costs.
While there seemingly are no ‘para-vets’ in the U.S. (are the veterinarians digging in their heels?), there are ‘vet assistants,’ though what you are charged for their services is the same, or nearly so, for what you would pay a DVM. Moreover, what they’re permitted to do is rigidly circumscribed. They can trim claws, perform hydrations and even – though usually not – euthanasia. They also assist, in some capacity, during surgery. Other than that, all they do is jot down the ‘intake notes,’ weigh the animal and take its temperature.
In contrast to this scope of activities, low-cost ‘family clinics’ are staffed with three physicians for every six para-physicians who, according to the news media, have eared a reputation for being as competent as the M.D.s in diagnosing and treating multiple afflictions. While these technicians lack surgical training, they are still seeing hordes of patients at affordable costs. (NOTE: Within months, Albert Schweitzer trained natives fresh from the jungle to perform complex surgery.) From medicine to law, some of the schools in the U.S. are thinking of cutting the curriculum from three to two years (a paralegal studies two years), and putting the students to work as interns in their 3rd year.
A three-year program in veterinary medicine is presumably rigorous, and the tuition exorbitant. Yet modern-day vets are no friend to animals. In days long gone, they charged their clients on a sliding scale, based upon income. A thing of the past. Millions of people of retirement age, or people of lower or middle income are barred from adopting dogs and cats that sit in the pound, waiting for the needle. Why? Because these people who want to adopt cannot afford veterinary care, the cost of which has soared light-years beyond the reach of all but high-income caregivers. One hundred and fifty-two dollars ($152.00) is a brutal fee for a lethal drug that costs the vet several dollars wholesale and takes him five minutes to inject into a dying animal. Two hundred and fifty dollars ($250.00) is criminal for an x-ray taken by a machine paid for already a thousand times over, a staggering fee for a negative taking a minute to process, and a minute to interpret.
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In a similar vein (this from a post several days ago: ‘Many people abandon their cats when they realize they can cost a thousand dollars a year to care for.’)
In his book The Tragic Sense of Life, Miguel de Unamuno defined love as ‘pity.’ A thin definition. As for love between humans, is it morally wrong to look for something more substantial than pity?
Most people love to acquire new skills. To explore new realms of thought through study or experience. Enjoy flavorful meals. Travel on occasion. Buy nice things once a while. Broaden their horizons.
In loving someone, is it unfair to hope that love will reward the lover with a modest degree of intellectual, esthetic and emotional gratification, a degree of likeness in tastes and values? Is it selfish for people to seek a human companion a ‘soul-mate’(yes – a cliché) who offers them a modicum of intellectual stimulus, moral and financial support, an interest in and a nuanced understanding of each other’s personalities?
Yet Unamuno writes that love between people has, as its source, only the pity each feels for the other because they are mortal. Because they must die.
Though many parents claim their animals are all they could wish for in a companion, parents who don’t feel this fulfillment are no less tender in giving their fur-child everything to enrich its life. It doesn’t matter its child lacks the power to give back a reciprocal enrichment. Because – who can deny this? – however endearing, what more can it give than what can be given by a mentally incompetent fellow human being? The pathos of serves only to intensify the animal’s lovability. It isn’t its fault, after all, that the evolution between cats, dogs and humans branched off into separate paths hundreds of millions of years ago. In spite of the ‘branching,’ a parent’s love for its fur-child is enduring. It doesn’t diminish because the animal’s love for its parent can never be more than intangible. With all its winning ways, all it can do is draw upon to the point of draining the parent’s resources in caring for himself – a start reality when he places his fur-child’s needs above his own.
Even more self-abnegating, how can there be love when there’s no awareness of its presence? When the sight of a stray cat inspires nothing but sick disbelief at the prospect of still more years of servitude, still more years of increasing costs? And – in the last chapter – the abject sorrow when the animal sinks into everlasting death?
Forget the freedom. Forget the savings. Forget the at-long-last getaways for a few days or a week or a month. Forget the whole thing, and buckle down to another 4,000 lbs. of canned and fresh meats for the next twenty years. Worming, ear and flea mite remedies. Spaying and neutering. Eight-hundred-and-fifty-dollar ($850.00) dental bills. Sky-high and perennially futile treatments for upper respiratory infections, cystitis and cancer, etc.
None of this matters. Knowing what lies ahead, the sight of a vagabond cat in the yard hammers home with ringing blows the impossibility of ridding yourself of the intruder. Never mind your financial and emotional exhaustion in having to parent still another unwanted cat, your irrationality – which is ingrained – rules out handing over the cat to a ‘no-kill’ sanctuary (if there is such a thing), where he’ll sit in a cage for who knows how long, or end up with someone who forgets to feed him half the time.
Unamuno was right. Love need have nothing to do with happiness. It takes root in the thinnest soil. In nothing but pity.
You are very important to the cat world because you tell the world what it is like in Pakistan for cats. People in the West don’t know. I am sure there are other countries in Asia that are similar to Pakistan for the cat. It is a lesson for us all in Europe and North America.
The Muslim faith does not protect cats because too many people are ignorant.
Yes it would feel like eating yourself ha ha
I love you Ahsan.
I do feel there must be some justice for cruel people but it’s very hard to see animals suffering by them until Karma catches up.
I don’t like/love meat. It seems to me as I am eating myself but don’t tell anyone else RUTH 😉 and YES I believe in KARMA and I believe in hereafter life of JUSTICE.
I love veges and variety of vege soups
Thanks
That’s OK Ahsan, Dee is my spiritual sister, it’s a pity we live in different countries.
Do you believe in Karma? I really hope it does exist for all the cruel people in the world.
I’m also interested, do you have vegetarians in your country? We go by the rule that we eat nothing which had a face in life, animals, birds, or fish.
Your situations is terrible, Ahsan.
Ofcourse there wouldn’t be a big push for more vets, especially for cats and dogs, because they are hated. Therefore, vets wouldn’t be in demand.
You are pursuing the only feasible thing you can, which is to educate yourself as much as possible about cats. It’s obvious how much learning you have already, much more than most people.
Like Ruth, I can’t find any legitimate online vet services that would be able to consult with you. But, it may be worth your while to email various organizations such as the Humane Society International and ask them questions.