Our Veterinary Research

Our vets and education professionals are constantly seeking new and effective ways to improve veterinary care, reduce sickness and injury, and promote compassionate animal ownership. Around the world, SPANA teams work alongside universities and NGOs to deliver cutting edge research to improve the lives of working animals. This ensures that our veterinary and education programmes have the greatest impact possible and lead to long term improvements in animal welfare.

To achieve these aims, we work in partnership with universities, organisations and individuals all around the world, helping to build a wealth of knowledge that can be used to improve the lives of working animals.

We seek to underpin all our veterinary and education programmes with evidence-based approaches, utilising a number of different research methodologies to provide evidence to address specific problems encountered by our projects overseas.

Peer reviewed papers include:

  • A cluster-randomised controlled trial to compare the effectiveness of different knowledge-transfer interventions for rural working equid users in Ethiopia
  • Pack wounds of donkeys and mules in the northern High Atlas and lowlands of Morocco
  • Improving working donkey (Equus asinus) welfare and management in Mali, West Africa
  • A community-based participatory study investigating the epidemiology and effects of rabies to livestock owners in rural Ethiopia

Spana in numbers

529K

veterinary treatments given in the last year

55

fixed and mobile clinics around the world

8.1k

pieces of humane equipment distributed in the last year

See some of the countries where we operate

SPANA humane education saves Wisky the dog

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Working donkey with lameness in Ethiopia

Help save animals from the agony of lameness

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Please help animals suffering from malnutrition

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Working donkey in Shashamane, Ethiopia affected by drought

One Health

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A drove of donkeys standing in a field in Zimbabwe

SPANA welcomes progress on donkey skin trade ban

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Two men in blue SPANA vet overalls holding a horses mouth

How Leaving a Bequest to Charity Could Make a Lasting Difference

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