For over 15 years, we’ve supported local charity Helping Organisation for People, Environment (HOPE) & Animal Trust to improve the lives of free-roaming dogs and protect communities in Ranchi, northern India.

At the end of 2020, we wrapped up our work in Ranchi and will be focusing on our vital programmes in Georgia and Afghanistan. Our collaboration with HOPE & Animal Trust has led to some fantastic achievements, which we are so proud to have been a part of.

Street and community dogs in India often face a number of challenges – they lack access to resources and are at risk of disease, traffic accidents and, sadly, abuse.

Since 2008, we’ve been funding HOPE & Animal Trust’s Animal Birth Control and Vaccination programme. Rabies is a deadly disease and India a particular hotspot. Under this programme, thousands of free-roaming and community dogs in Ranchi city have been neutered and vaccinated, helping to break the chain of virus transmission and prevent the spread of rabies, as well as attempting to humanely control the dog population.

Today, Ranchi has a stable dog population, with no growth in the number of dogs on the street.* Almost 100,000 dogs have been neutered and vaccinated, which is over 72% of free-roaming dogs, and there have been no recorded human rabies deaths in the city since 2017.

More achievements to be proud of

We’ve worked hard to support HOPE & Animal Trust with capacity building, which has involved several Mayhew vets spending time in Ranchi over the years. Dr Mo worked with the team at HOPE & Animal Trust to redesign and modernise their veterinary clinic – and the team were so delighted with the results they named the new clinic after him! We’ve helped with training local vets in the latest neutering techniques, skills and expertise, which have then been passed on to others. In total, 47 local vets have been trained during our collaboration.

We also funded an Education Officer to visit local communities and schools. The education and awareness programme has reached well over 500,000 people and has had a huge impact according to HOPE & Animal Trust founder and CEO Praveen Ohal: “Over a decade of educational activity has helped Ranchi’s population understand the importance of sterilisation, ‘dos and don’ts’ with dogs and how to be kind towards all animals. I think this is making a big difference in helping us to change behaviours and build compassion towards the stray dogs.”

Praveen also told us that “If a stray dog is injured or needs help, people call us. Lots of local people are even adopting the dogs from the streets and coming forward to get them neutered if they’re not already.”

Helping our work in Afghanistan

The team at HOPE & Animal Trust were an integral part of training of our dog-catching and vaccination teams in Kabul for Mayhew Afghanistan. They generously passed on invaluable advice and expertise in this field, for which we would like to express our sincere thanks.

HOPE & Animal Trust have made outstanding progress in improving the lives of both dogs and people. We have enabled them to achieve this through our collaboration, providing funding, support and expertise, and they are now in a strong position to continue their great work. We wish the team the best of luck!