THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Soi Dog Foundation launches funding appeal to build new state-of-the-art animal hospital in Phuket

Soi Dog Foundation launches funding appeal to build new state-of-the-art animal hospital in Phuket

Thailand's leading dog and cat welfare charity Soi Dog announced Monday the launch of a fundraising campaign to build a new, state-of-the-art animal hospital at its shelter in Mai Khao, Phuket.

The proposed hospital will take 10 months to build, and will be the largest and most modern dog hospital in Thailand, providing the best medical treatment facilities in the country. 
It will treat all kinds of dog ailments common to street dogs and those rescued from the illegal dog meat trade. These range from mange to fractures, burns, machete wounds, tumours, poisoning, teeth issues, road traffic accidents, distemper and much more. The hospital will give hundreds of thousands of Thai dogs the chance to live healthy and happy lives well into the future. 
“We started Soi Dog over 10 years ago and we’ve been using the same small clinic to treat the sick dogs of Phuket, but the reality now is that the number of animals we treat each year has increased many times over,” Soi Dogs co-founder John Dalley said .
“This is due in part to helping dogs saved from the illegal dog meat trade in northern Thailand, but also in part due to the extension of our sterilisation programme here in Phuket, which has taken us into areas of the island where we are now finding more strays that need treatment.
“We simply do not have the capacity or the facilities to treat all the dogs that need help now, and it is heartbreaking to not be able to provide top-quality, immediate treatment. I never want to be in a situation again where we see animals suffering and even dying because we cannot attend to them fast enough”.
The new hospital will be able to provide treatment for more than 150 dogs at the same time, and the improved facilities will help Soi Dog provide types of treatments they could not provide before. “The proposed much updated operating theatre will allow us to perform a much more extensive range of operations than we could do before. Other new facilities such as the contagious diseases unit will mean we can separate infected dogs from those otherwise disease-free animals, and the physiotherapy unit will provide much needed rehabilitation treatment for dogs who need to learn how to walk again, to rebuild muscle, or to recover from spinal injuries,” Dalley said.
Since Soi Dog started its operations back in 2003, more than 75,000 dogs and cats in Phuket have been sterilised and vaccinated, and thousands of street dogs and cats have been treated at the Soi Dog shelter. As a direct result of the sterilisation and vaccination programme, Phuket has become the only province in Thailand to be declared rabies-free. 
The cost of building the hospital and equipping it to cope with the new challenges that lie ahead will cost in excess of Bt30 million. 
“The people of Thailand have been extremely generous in the past when we have had appeals to raise funds for disasters like the flooding in central Thailand a few years ago, the distemper outbreak in 2011, and even the tsunami back in 2004. We hope we can count on their continued support to help us make an even greater contribution to the lives of street dogs and cats, and to those rescued from the illegal dog meat trade in this country,” Dalley said.
 
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