Kelvin Wee
Laos, November 2020
Kelvin Wee has been working over the last year to raise awareness of rabies and improve veterinary care in Laos. He received the Rabies Hero Award in recognition of his amazing work to put this disease on the agenda, working with minimal resources and overcoming many challenges. Kelvin was deeply humbled to receive the award and dedicated it to his team of volunteers.
Kelvin has been the driving force behind raising rabies awareness in the country. He worked with the Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) to improve training for veterinary surgeons and organized volunteer programs to conduct dog surveillance and educate people about dogs and rabies. With very little resource he has been inspirational.
Reflecting on the work during the past year Kelvin told us:
“World Rabies Day was a big success in Laos. We supported the public vaccination which only showed us that while education is still needed here, Lao communities are beginning to understand the importance of vaccinations. A week after that, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations came to visit us and gave 200 vaccines to help start the village-to-village vaccination programme. We have partnered with the National University of Laos’ Veterinary Medicine Faculty to start this but were faced with the monsoon/typhoon season. The rains and floods have forced us to hold surveys and plans for a few weeks for safety sake. We plan on starting the surveys in 2-3 weeks when the threat from flash floods to our student volunteers is over.
As you can see, it has been nothing but challenging. But we hope to have our first village-level rabies campaign in December, just before Christmas. Apart from that, we have established a shelter here where all our animals are vaccinated (not just rabies but other diseases too) which is a first time for Laos.”
