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Sunday, May 18, 2025

Dr Ansarah Hosein-Passionate about caring for animals

by

KRISTY RAMNARINE
421 days ago
20240324

KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Treat an­i­mals re­spect­ful­ly and hu­mane­ly. It’s an Is­lam­ic teach­ing which Dr Ansarah Ho­sein is hap­py to live by.

The As­sis­tant Lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine is cred­it­ed for start­ing the coun­try’s first ca­nine blood bank. She got the idea while do­ing her Mas­ter’s de­gree at the On­tario Vet­eri­nary Col­lege.

“I ob­served their blood bank and the ease and ef­fi­cien­cy of ad­min­is­ter­ing blood to pa­tients in a time­ly man­ner,” Dr Ho­sein said.

“With the help of Dr Sab­ri­na Thomas, we were able to make it pos­si­ble. At the Vet­eri­nary Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal we see many pa­tients that need blood, and hav­ing the blood read­i­ly avail­able can save an an­i­mal’s life. Since the start of the blood bank in 2020, we have ad­min­is­tered on av­er­age around 200 blood trans­fu­sions to dogs.”

Dr Ho­sein re­alised from a young age that car­ing for an­i­mals was her pas­sion.

“When I was in high school, one of my kit­tens be­came sud­den­ly paral­ysed in his back legs,” she ex­plained.

“We took him to three vets and the first two ad­vised that we should put the kit­ten to sleep (eu­thana­sia). We didn’t want to do this so we sought a third opin­ion. That vet gave us med­ica­tion to give to the kit­ten, and he re­turned to be­ing able to walk nor­mal­ly in a few weeks. The ex­pe­ri­ence res­onat­ed with me, and so when the time came to make up my mind about a pro­fes­sion to choose to study at uni­ver­si­ty is when I fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed for sure to be­come a vet­eri­nar­i­an.”

Dr Ho­sein con­tin­ues to be pas­sion­ate about the Ca­nine Blood Bank.

“There are a hand­ful of reg­u­lar donors and we have had many one-time donors who have been brought in to help their friend/rel­a­tive’s pet,” she added.

“We are al­ways in need of new donors as it is chal­leng­ing for some peo­ple to com­mit the time to bring their dogs to do­nate. In Trinidad, there is a high preva­lence of dogs that are in­fect­ed with blood par­a­sites that are spread by ticks and this al­so caus­es po­ten­tial donors to not pass the screen­ing process fair­ly of­ten.” Do­na­tions are done by ap­point­ment.

“Ini­tial­ly a thor­ough ex­am­i­na­tion is per­formed on the an­i­mal, and blood is tak­en for a blood count,” Dr Ho­sein said.

“Once the an­i­mal meets the cri­te­ria for do­na­tion (one-eight years of age, healthy, >25 Kg, no ec­topar­a­sites present, good tem­pera­ment) and the blood count is nor­mal then we pro­ceed to col­lect the blood from the jugu­lar vein in­to the same type of blood col­lec­tion bag that is used for peo­ple.

“The dogs are usu­al­ly fine af­ter do­na­tion and can walk out of the clin­ic nor­mal­ly. Ad­vice is giv­en on how to care for the site that the blood was tak­en from to pre­vent in­fec­tions.”

Born and raised in Is­lam, Dr Ho­sein con­tin­ues to bal­ance the fast­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with Ra­madan and her dai­ly job.

“Fast­ing in Ra­madan al­ways feels eas­i­er to me than fast­ing at oth­er times of the year,” she said.

“This year two of my co-work­ers are al­so fast­ing so it is nice to have com­pa­ny. In Ra­madan, Mus­lims al­so strive to in­crease their good deeds and there are many op­por­tu­ni­ties at my work­place to do this whether it be giv­ing ad­vice to clients or stu­dents or help­ing re­lieve an­i­mal suf­fer­ing and sim­ple acts of kind­ness.”

She is look­ing for­ward to feel­ing the sense of ac­com­plish­ment of hav­ing fast­ed and at­tempt­ed to be­come a bet­ter per­son.

While there will be a touch of sor­row that the month of mer­cy has come to an end, she is al­so ex­cit­ed and hap­py for Eid cel­e­bra­tions which she tries to make a mem­o­rable and en­joy­able event for her chil­dren.

Donors can con­tact Dr Sab­ri­na Thomas at ansarah.ho­sein@sta.uwi.edu or sab­ri­na.thomas@sta.uwi.edu to arrange the ap­point­ment.


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