A team of doctors and veterinarians has developed a novel treatment for the pair of elephants in the Karachi Safari Park that suffers from tuberculosis that involves feeding them at least 400 pills per day.
The jumbo effort of the personnel involves administering the tablets, as well as those used to treat tuberculosis in humans, hidden within the foods ranging from apples and bananas to sweets.
The amount of medications is adjusted to take into account the weight of the 4,000 kilograms elephants.
But it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to establish themselves in the treatment after spitting the first doses they tested from the bitter medicine and irregularly loading their guardians.
“Giving TB treatment to elephants is always a challenge. Every day we use different methods,” said Buddhika Bandara, a veterinary surgeon of Sri Lanka who flew to supervise the treatment.
“The animals showed some stress at the beginning, but gradually adapted to the procedure,” said Bandara, who has helped more than a dozen elephants to recover from the disease in Sri Lanka.
Mahout Ali Baloch wakes up early the rice and lentil stew, mixed with a lot of molasses with sugar cane and wheel the mixture in dozens of perforated balls with the tablets.
“I know that the pills are bitter,” said the 22 -year -old, watching the elephants splashed under a hose to stay fresh.
From humans to elephants
Four African elephants, very young captured in nature in Tanzania, arrived in Karachi in 2009.
Noor Jehan died in 2023 at the age of 17, and another, Sonia, followed at the end of 2024. An autopsy showed that he had contracted tuberculosis, which is endemic in Pakistan.
The tests carried out in Madhubala and Malika also returned positive, and the City Council, owner of the park, brought together a team to take care of the Pachyderms.
Bandara said it is not uncommon for elephants to contract the contagious disease of humans, but that Sonia, and now Madhubala and Malika, had not shown symptoms.
“It was surprising for me that the elephants have TB,” said Naseem Salahuddin, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Hospital and Health of the Indo, which was registered to monitor staff.
“This is an interesting case for me and my students: everyone wants to know about the procedure and its progress,” she said. AFP
The four mahout team uses facial masks and thickets by feeding elephants to avoid getting a disease that infects more than 500,000 humans a year.
Safari Park has been criticized for a long time for the abuse of captive animals, including an evacuated elephant after a campaign by American singer Cher, but expects his last two elephants to exceed the disease with a one -year treatment plan.
