By Lesley Bates
Tucked away in Cranborne are the headquarters of a global mission to help animals. Lesley Bates meets the man behind it and gets the lowdown on his fascinating work.
Roald Dahl produced stories about giant peaches and big friendly giants in his. But what happens in Luke Gamble’s shed is something completely different.
It is the headquarters for Worldwide Veterinary Service, a rapidly expanding veterinary charity which sends equipment and teams of volunteer vets and nurses on, what amounts to, an extreme form of busman’s holiday working with animal welfare organisation across the globe.
Set up in 2003 by Luke, a 30-year-old vet who lives in Martin, the charity occupies the building behind Pilgrims Veterinary Practice in Cranborne. Admittedly, this is not your average six-by-four, larchlap structure.
It is large enough to accommodate the wherewithal to organise the 45 teams sent to countries ranging from Bhutan and India to Gambia and Botswana in the last 18 months. And it’s not just personnel – equipment and drugs are also depatched and advice (lots of it, says Luke) freely given where they are most needed. So far, 65 organisations in 37 countries have benefited.
WVS – with its full-time staff of International Projects Co-ordinator, Hannah Westen, and Public Relations Officer, Tess Pollard, plus former customs and revenue tax inspector, Helen Lord, who keeps a close eye on all things financial on a part-time basis – has one half of the space.
In the other half is Pet-Air UK, a specialist travel service which organises the transportation of pets overseas. Luke is the human dynamo behind all three enterprises – pluus an out-of-hours emergency vet service in the Bournemouth and Poole area.
Last year, he competed in the gruelling Marathon des Sables, a six-day endurance race across the Sahara desert, to raise awareness of the charity. Today, dressed in safari shirt, shorts and desert boots, he looks as though he is ready to take part again.
His passion for animal welfare is evident as he explains why he set up the charity “I’ve always liked travel and adventure and been interested in conservation” he says. “I’d worked with black rhinos in Zimbabwe and been to a wildlife symposium in South Africa, and I’d also volunteered for some trips as a vet”.
It quickly became apparent, he says, that many of the animal charities and sanctuaries, while run by well-intentioned people, had little or no qualified veterinary provision. “I thought we could set up a charity to provide a sustainable veterinary resource – volunteers, drugs and advice to small non-profit organisations” he adds.
So WVS was born with the aim of alleviating suffering and improving the welfare and moral perception of animals worldwide. The emphasis is on sustainability, building long-term relationships with the charities in question and developing education programmes to encourage better animal husbandry among the local population.
“We work with local vets wherever we go and we try and go back two or three times a year” he says. “To make a difference, you’ve got to keep going back and supporting all the time. It would be crazy to be a flash in the pan thing.”
Many of the charities WVS helps are small and very localised. “The ones which grab me” adds Luke “are the ones without fancy websites who really need the help.” Charities such as the Twinkle Trust in Fuerteventura, which helps stray cats, or the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust, which takes in abused and malnourished equines.
WVS was called in to help a local charity in a village just south of Bangalore, after a dog cull had been ordered following the savaging of a doctor by a pack of feral dogs. The upshot, says Luke, was the dangerous dogs were too difficult to catch, so the animals which were slaughtered were the domesticated dogs in the slums – leaving the area free for the ferals to move in, bringing disease with them.
“It was bad for tourism and bad for public health” says Luke, “so we were asked to help the IPAN (India Protection for Animals and Nature)with a major dog neutering campaign and rabies vaccination programme.”
“We’ve got another team going back in a couple of weeks”
While the majority of voluntary help comes from the UK, WVS has also sent out veterinary teams from Canada, France and the Netherlands. British veterinary practices and pharmaceutical companies are also generous with donations of equipment and short-dated drugs.
Luke exudes boyish enthusiasm as he flicks through the charity’s webpages, eager to show us what the volunteers – there are now more than 1000 of them signed up – have done, and what more can be achieved.
Volunteers pay a nominal annual membership subscription of £30 – although you can become a friend of WVS by making any one-off donation.
While some of the teams are sent to work on wildlife projects, the greatest needs if often with domestic animals whose well-being impacts on the local communities who keep them.
“There’s a strong humanitarian element to everything we do” he says, pointing out that the health and livelihoods of people, particularly in developing countries, are closely linked to animal health and disease control.
Operations are frequently carried out in far from ideal conditions.
Families are often dependent on the outcome of what you do – you want to do your best and don’t always have the right equipment and facilities” he explains.
In India, Luke was confronted with a cow with two broken back legs. While there was little hope for the cow, Luke knew the family was completely dependent on the calf she was carrying. It’s hard when there are a lot of human issues involved he sighs. “I had to shoot the cow and get the calf out safely, but now she’s doing well and her name is Megan”
Volunteer with WVS is not restricted to vets – most teams require support staff to record operations and generally help out.
And there are opportunities for teachers with the Worldwide Training Service, the charity’s educational arm, which send its first trip to Uganda this August to educate primary school children about animal welfare.
He is within a whisker of securing a major grant which will enable him to set up a rapid response team which could deploy teams to any disaster zone where animals have been caught up in emergencies.
“I didn’t expect it to grow so fast.” he admits. “It’s something I care about, which gives me a lot of enthusiasm for the career I chose. It’s very pure veterinary practice”
He pauses and winces.
“That sounds very pious. Just say it’s the adventure of it, the excitement of the work and the idealistic values of the work”.
It is, he acknowledges, very much down to the support of his wife Cordelia, a small animals vet, that he is able to channel so much energy into WVS. But, with their first child expected in December, he frets his plan to swim the Channel next year to raise awareness might have to be put on hold.
“You need to do something out of the ordinary he says.
Most people would say he already has.
