LOGIN/REGISTER
OVAID - Orangutan Veterinary Aid
15/04/24
With National Orangutan Day coming up on the 19th of this month, we reached out to our good friends over at OVAID, Nigel & Sara, who have kindly put together this blog for us. At J.A.K we provide
ongoing support to OVAID through both financial and equipment donations. This month*, along with our usual Purfect Disposable Drapes offer (10p from each pack/roll and 50p from each box donated),
we are donating 5% of any Biolight sale. These patient monitors are also on a 15% discount this month, meaning it's win-win, with donation amounts from each machine listed below:
Biolight M12 - £97.33 Donated to OVAID
Biolight S12 - £110.29 Donated to OVAID
Biolight P12 - £178.50 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M800 - £12.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M850 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M860 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M880 - £59.29 Donated to OVAID
Biolight S12 - £110.29 Donated to OVAID
Biolight P12 - £178.50 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M800 - £12.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M850 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M860 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M880 - £59.29 Donated to OVAID
Now, on to Nigel & Sara's words...
Life as a mixed practice vet in the U.K. is never dull. Most of you will be all too familiar with the exacting exigencies a veterinary career places on you, it is hectic, demanding, fulfilling, frustrating and full of highs and sometimes lows; as I headed for retirement I was looking forward to indulgently doing much less and with no timetable. In fact, the opposite happened and my wife Sara and I now find ourselves busier than ever and are never quite sure of when, or where we will be. From one of our office desks we gaze out at Cornish fields whilst from another across the globe, we sip a syrupy dark coffee as we gaze at the rainforest steaming in the early morning mist as gibbon call to each other in the treetops. The reason we are this lucky - we run an orangutan charity working with one of the most charismatic but critically endangered of the Great Apes. The work is hard, tiring and often traumatic but with huge rewards of satisfaction.
Luck gave me the opportunity to experience working with orangutan after 35 years as a mixed practice vet and I haven’t looked back with any regrets since. Our journey started by chance 13 years ago when a volunteer opportunity at an orangutan rescue centre in Sabah, in the northeastern tip of Borneo turned into the offer of a job for myself. Slightly daunted at the prospect of caring for more than 50 critically endangered orangutan and concerned that I had perhaps suddenly become a charlatan wildlife veterinarian, Sara and I, nevertheless launched ourselves wholeheartedly into our new, tropical career.
We worked together as vet and assistant in Malaysian Borneo in the orangutan rescue centre over a 5-year period from 2009 and we were often sent into Indonesian Borneo to work alongside orangutan rescue teams. It was obvious to us that there was a desperate need to help these vets on the frontline of orangutan conservation whose centres were not government-funded, unlike those in Malaysia and this planted the seed of what would become our charity, Orangutan Veterinary Aid (OVAID). In Indonesia, we found a situation where the rate of deforestation was continuing at breakneck speed and huge numbers of orangutan rescues were being undertaken resulting in over a thousand resident orangutans in the Indonesian rescue centres of Kalimantan and Sumatra. Compared to Sabah in Malaysia, this was a world apart and we knew that Indonesia was where we needed to focus our attention and resources.
We saw a desperate need for veterinary equipment, medicines and supplies which OVAID has since continuously sought to fulfil, but also a need for practical veterinary assistance and so, in 2014 when leaving Sabah, the OVAID charity was born. Since 2014 we have spent over 2.5 years volunteering at orangutan rescue centres as part of the veterinary teams in Indonesian Borneo, at International Animal Rescue in Ketapang, BOS Foundation at Nyaru Menteng and Sumatra at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) where I mentored SOCP’s new graduate vet for 6 months in 2016.
Our aim as a charity has always been to support the veterinary teams, on the frontline, we fulfil ongoing Veterinary Wish Lists at all the major orangutan rescue centres in Indonesia and to date have donated over £260,000 of veterinary supplies, including anything from lifesaving drip sets to £45,000 Digital X-Ray systems.
OVAID are a small, completely voluntary run charity with minimal overheads and we are sure that this has helped us grow and brought us donations from dedicated supporters who see that we can respond rapidly to urgent requests and deliver exactly what is needed by the rescue teams. Of course, we cannot do this alone or even with the help of individual supporters but luckily we have been able to develop positive associations with veterinary businesses. A chance meeting with Michelle and Jane of JAK Marketing at the London Vet Show back in 2015 sowed the seed of an amazing and generous relationship which has grown over the years and seen us able to support the orangutan rescue teams with equipment which would otherwise have been completely impossible. Not only are JAK relentless in their efforts to assist us, they have even ventured into the humid and sweaty tropical rainforest with us to see the very orangutan that they help!
With our extensive knowledge and experience from working within the vet teams, OVAID realised the importance of long-term maintenance of this supplied equipment and the need for continuous training and support. To this end, the charity now also concentrates on providing in situ training by vets and experts and funds a scholarship to bring Indonesian orangutan vets to the UK for an exchange of ideas and further education at centres of excellence including Liverpool University, Chester Zoo, Paignton Zoo and specialist veterinary practices. During the pandemic, the charity (together with BOSF Schweiz) also funded a three-month training programme at BOSF Samboja Lestari by an experienced wildlife/primate veterinarian. This programme facilitated the extensive training of the young vet team and resulted in more than 20 orangutans and 30 sun bear surgeries being carried out initially under supervision but ultimately by the resident vet team themselves.
The welfare of rescued and rehabilitant orangutan is our priority together with supporting the veterinary teams that care for them and we cannot thank James and the whole team at JAK Marketing enough for all that they do for us year in and year out. A phone call to JAK in Yorkshire never fails to bring results - if what we need is not on the shelf (very rare), it somehow miraculously appears in double quick time. As I write this in the Cornish sunshine, we are preparing to resume travelling to Indonesia following the pandemic and will be taking 120kg of donations with us - we are just waiting for the latest box of supplies to wing its way to us from Sheriff Hutton and we will be off!
Dr Nigel Hicks & Sara Fell Hicks
Co-founders
Orangutan Veterinary Aid
www.ovaid.org
*T&Cs apply, ends 31/08/2022.
Life as a mixed practice vet in the U.K. is never dull. Most of you will be all too familiar with the exacting exigencies a veterinary career places on you, it is hectic, demanding, fulfilling, frustrating and full of highs and sometimes lows; as I headed for retirement I was looking forward to indulgently doing much less and with no timetable. In fact, the opposite happened and my wife Sara and I now find ourselves busier than ever and are never quite sure of when, or where we will be. From one of our office desks we gaze out at Cornish fields whilst from another across the globe, we sip a syrupy dark coffee as we gaze at the rainforest steaming in the early morning mist as gibbon call to each other in the treetops. The reason we are this lucky - we run an orangutan charity working with one of the most charismatic but critically endangered of the Great Apes. The work is hard, tiring and often traumatic but with huge rewards of satisfaction.
Luck gave me the opportunity to experience working with orangutan after 35 years as a mixed practice vet and I haven’t looked back with any regrets since. Our journey started by chance 13 years ago when a volunteer opportunity at an orangutan rescue centre in Sabah, in the northeastern tip of Borneo turned into the offer of a job for myself. Slightly daunted at the prospect of caring for more than 50 critically endangered orangutan and concerned that I had perhaps suddenly become a charlatan wildlife veterinarian, Sara and I, nevertheless launched ourselves wholeheartedly into our new, tropical career.
We worked together as vet and assistant in Malaysian Borneo in the orangutan rescue centre over a 5-year period from 2009 and we were often sent into Indonesian Borneo to work alongside orangutan rescue teams. It was obvious to us that there was a desperate need to help these vets on the frontline of orangutan conservation whose centres were not government-funded, unlike those in Malaysia and this planted the seed of what would become our charity, Orangutan Veterinary Aid (OVAID). In Indonesia, we found a situation where the rate of deforestation was continuing at breakneck speed and huge numbers of orangutan rescues were being undertaken resulting in over a thousand resident orangutans in the Indonesian rescue centres of Kalimantan and Sumatra. Compared to Sabah in Malaysia, this was a world apart and we knew that Indonesia was where we needed to focus our attention and resources.
We saw a desperate need for veterinary equipment, medicines and supplies which OVAID has since continuously sought to fulfil, but also a need for practical veterinary assistance and so, in 2014 when leaving Sabah, the OVAID charity was born. Since 2014 we have spent over 2.5 years volunteering at orangutan rescue centres as part of the veterinary teams in Indonesian Borneo, at International Animal Rescue in Ketapang, BOS Foundation at Nyaru Menteng and Sumatra at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) where I mentored SOCP’s new graduate vet for 6 months in 2016.
Our aim as a charity has always been to support the veterinary teams, on the frontline, we fulfil ongoing Veterinary Wish Lists at all the major orangutan rescue centres in Indonesia and to date have donated over £260,000 of veterinary supplies, including anything from lifesaving drip sets to £45,000 Digital X-Ray systems.
OVAID are a small, completely voluntary run charity with minimal overheads and we are sure that this has helped us grow and brought us donations from dedicated supporters who see that we can respond rapidly to urgent requests and deliver exactly what is needed by the rescue teams. Of course, we cannot do this alone or even with the help of individual supporters but luckily we have been able to develop positive associations with veterinary businesses. A chance meeting with Michelle and Jane of JAK Marketing at the London Vet Show back in 2015 sowed the seed of an amazing and generous relationship which has grown over the years and seen us able to support the orangutan rescue teams with equipment which would otherwise have been completely impossible. Not only are JAK relentless in their efforts to assist us, they have even ventured into the humid and sweaty tropical rainforest with us to see the very orangutan that they help!
With our extensive knowledge and experience from working within the vet teams, OVAID realised the importance of long-term maintenance of this supplied equipment and the need for continuous training and support. To this end, the charity now also concentrates on providing in situ training by vets and experts and funds a scholarship to bring Indonesian orangutan vets to the UK for an exchange of ideas and further education at centres of excellence including Liverpool University, Chester Zoo, Paignton Zoo and specialist veterinary practices. During the pandemic, the charity (together with BOSF Schweiz) also funded a three-month training programme at BOSF Samboja Lestari by an experienced wildlife/primate veterinarian. This programme facilitated the extensive training of the young vet team and resulted in more than 20 orangutans and 30 sun bear surgeries being carried out initially under supervision but ultimately by the resident vet team themselves.
The welfare of rescued and rehabilitant orangutan is our priority together with supporting the veterinary teams that care for them and we cannot thank James and the whole team at JAK Marketing enough for all that they do for us year in and year out. A phone call to JAK in Yorkshire never fails to bring results - if what we need is not on the shelf (very rare), it somehow miraculously appears in double quick time. As I write this in the Cornish sunshine, we are preparing to resume travelling to Indonesia following the pandemic and will be taking 120kg of donations with us - we are just waiting for the latest box of supplies to wing its way to us from Sheriff Hutton and we will be off!
Dr Nigel Hicks & Sara Fell Hicks
Co-founders
Orangutan Veterinary Aid
www.ovaid.org
*T&Cs apply, ends 31/08/2022.
Categories:
Comments (0)
Write a comment
Tell us what you think about this blog and share your experience with others. Please include only information that is relevant to the blog you are commenting.
OVAID - Orangutan Veterinary Aid
15/04/24
With National Orangutan Day coming up on the 19th of this month, we reached out to our good friends over at OVAID, Nigel & Sara, who have kindly put together this blog for us. At J.A.K we provide ongoing support to OVAID through both financial and equipment donations. This month*, along with our usual Purfect Disposable Drapes offer (10p from each pack/roll and 50p from each box donated), we are donating 5% of any Biolight sale. These patient monitors are also on a 15% discount this month, meaning it's win-win, with donation amounts from each machine listed below:
Biolight M12 - £97.33 Donated to OVAID
Biolight S12 - £110.29 Donated to OVAID
Biolight P12 - £178.50 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M800 - £12.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M850 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M860 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M880 - £59.29 Donated to OVAID
Biolight S12 - £110.29 Donated to OVAID
Biolight P12 - £178.50 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M800 - £12.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M850 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M860 - £29.54 Donated to OVAID
Biolight M880 - £59.29 Donated to OVAID
Now, on to Nigel & Sara's words...
Life as a mixed practice vet in the U.K. is never dull. Most of you will be all too familiar with the exacting exigencies a veterinary career places on you, it is hectic, demanding, fulfilling, frustrating and full of highs and sometimes lows; as I headed for retirement I was looking forward to indulgently doing much less and with no timetable. In fact, the opposite happened and my wife Sara and I now find ourselves busier than ever and are never quite sure of when, or where we will be. From one of our office desks we gaze out at Cornish fields whilst from another across the globe, we sip a syrupy dark coffee as we gaze at the rainforest steaming in the early morning mist as gibbon call to each other in the treetops. The reason we are this lucky - we run an orangutan charity working with one of the most charismatic but critically endangered of the Great Apes. The work is hard, tiring and often traumatic but with huge rewards of satisfaction.
Luck gave me the opportunity to experience working with orangutan after 35 years as a mixed practice vet and I haven’t looked back with any regrets since. Our journey started by chance 13 years ago when a volunteer opportunity at an orangutan rescue centre in Sabah, in the northeastern tip of Borneo turned into the offer of a job for myself. Slightly daunted at the prospect of caring for more than 50 critically endangered orangutan and concerned that I had perhaps suddenly become a charlatan wildlife veterinarian, Sara and I, nevertheless launched ourselves wholeheartedly into our new, tropical career.
We worked together as vet and assistant in Malaysian Borneo in the orangutan rescue centre over a 5-year period from 2009 and we were often sent into Indonesian Borneo to work alongside orangutan rescue teams. It was obvious to us that there was a desperate need to help these vets on the frontline of orangutan conservation whose centres were not government-funded, unlike those in Malaysia and this planted the seed of what would become our charity, Orangutan Veterinary Aid (OVAID). In Indonesia, we found a situation where the rate of deforestation was continuing at breakneck speed and huge numbers of orangutan rescues were being undertaken resulting in over a thousand resident orangutans in the Indonesian rescue centres of Kalimantan and Sumatra. Compared to Sabah in Malaysia, this was a world apart and we knew that Indonesia was where we needed to focus our attention and resources.
We saw a desperate need for veterinary equipment, medicines and supplies which OVAID has since continuously sought to fulfil, but also a need for practical veterinary assistance and so, in 2014 when leaving Sabah, the OVAID charity was born. Since 2014 we have spent over 2.5 years volunteering at orangutan rescue centres as part of the veterinary teams in Indonesian Borneo, at International Animal Rescue in Ketapang, BOS Foundation at Nyaru Menteng and Sumatra at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) where I mentored SOCP’s new graduate vet for 6 months in 2016.
Our aim as a charity has always been to support the veterinary teams, on the frontline, we fulfil ongoing Veterinary Wish Lists at all the major orangutan rescue centres in Indonesia and to date have donated over £260,000 of veterinary supplies, including anything from lifesaving drip sets to £45,000 Digital X-Ray systems.
OVAID are a small, completely voluntary run charity with minimal overheads and we are sure that this has helped us grow and brought us donations from dedicated supporters who see that we can respond rapidly to urgent requests and deliver exactly what is needed by the rescue teams. Of course, we cannot do this alone or even with the help of individual supporters but luckily we have been able to develop positive associations with veterinary businesses. A chance meeting with Michelle and Jane of JAK Marketing at the London Vet Show back in 2015 sowed the seed of an amazing and generous relationship which has grown over the years and seen us able to support the orangutan rescue teams with equipment which would otherwise have been completely impossible. Not only are JAK relentless in their efforts to assist us, they have even ventured into the humid and sweaty tropical rainforest with us to see the very orangutan that they help!
With our extensive knowledge and experience from working within the vet teams, OVAID realised the importance of long-term maintenance of this supplied equipment and the need for continuous training and support. To this end, the charity now also concentrates on providing in situ training by vets and experts and funds a scholarship to bring Indonesian orangutan vets to the UK for an exchange of ideas and further education at centres of excellence including Liverpool University, Chester Zoo, Paignton Zoo and specialist veterinary practices. During the pandemic, the charity (together with BOSF Schweiz) also funded a three-month training programme at BOSF Samboja Lestari by an experienced wildlife/primate veterinarian. This programme facilitated the extensive training of the young vet team and resulted in more than 20 orangutans and 30 sun bear surgeries being carried out initially under supervision but ultimately by the resident vet team themselves.
The welfare of rescued and rehabilitant orangutan is our priority together with supporting the veterinary teams that care for them and we cannot thank James and the whole team at JAK Marketing enough for all that they do for us year in and year out. A phone call to JAK in Yorkshire never fails to bring results - if what we need is not on the shelf (very rare), it somehow miraculously appears in double quick time. As I write this in the Cornish sunshine, we are preparing to resume travelling to Indonesia following the pandemic and will be taking 120kg of donations with us - we are just waiting for the latest box of supplies to wing its way to us from Sheriff Hutton and we will be off!
Dr Nigel Hicks & Sara Fell Hicks
Co-founders
Orangutan Veterinary Aid
www.ovaid.org
*T&Cs apply, ends 31/08/2022.
Life as a mixed practice vet in the U.K. is never dull. Most of you will be all too familiar with the exacting exigencies a veterinary career places on you, it is hectic, demanding, fulfilling, frustrating and full of highs and sometimes lows; as I headed for retirement I was looking forward to indulgently doing much less and with no timetable. In fact, the opposite happened and my wife Sara and I now find ourselves busier than ever and are never quite sure of when, or where we will be. From one of our office desks we gaze out at Cornish fields whilst from another across the globe, we sip a syrupy dark coffee as we gaze at the rainforest steaming in the early morning mist as gibbon call to each other in the treetops. The reason we are this lucky - we run an orangutan charity working with one of the most charismatic but critically endangered of the Great Apes. The work is hard, tiring and often traumatic but with huge rewards of satisfaction.
Luck gave me the opportunity to experience working with orangutan after 35 years as a mixed practice vet and I haven’t looked back with any regrets since. Our journey started by chance 13 years ago when a volunteer opportunity at an orangutan rescue centre in Sabah, in the northeastern tip of Borneo turned into the offer of a job for myself. Slightly daunted at the prospect of caring for more than 50 critically endangered orangutan and concerned that I had perhaps suddenly become a charlatan wildlife veterinarian, Sara and I, nevertheless launched ourselves wholeheartedly into our new, tropical career.
We worked together as vet and assistant in Malaysian Borneo in the orangutan rescue centre over a 5-year period from 2009 and we were often sent into Indonesian Borneo to work alongside orangutan rescue teams. It was obvious to us that there was a desperate need to help these vets on the frontline of orangutan conservation whose centres were not government-funded, unlike those in Malaysia and this planted the seed of what would become our charity, Orangutan Veterinary Aid (OVAID). In Indonesia, we found a situation where the rate of deforestation was continuing at breakneck speed and huge numbers of orangutan rescues were being undertaken resulting in over a thousand resident orangutans in the Indonesian rescue centres of Kalimantan and Sumatra. Compared to Sabah in Malaysia, this was a world apart and we knew that Indonesia was where we needed to focus our attention and resources.
We saw a desperate need for veterinary equipment, medicines and supplies which OVAID has since continuously sought to fulfil, but also a need for practical veterinary assistance and so, in 2014 when leaving Sabah, the OVAID charity was born. Since 2014 we have spent over 2.5 years volunteering at orangutan rescue centres as part of the veterinary teams in Indonesian Borneo, at International Animal Rescue in Ketapang, BOS Foundation at Nyaru Menteng and Sumatra at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) where I mentored SOCP’s new graduate vet for 6 months in 2016.
Our aim as a charity has always been to support the veterinary teams, on the frontline, we fulfil ongoing Veterinary Wish Lists at all the major orangutan rescue centres in Indonesia and to date have donated over £260,000 of veterinary supplies, including anything from lifesaving drip sets to £45,000 Digital X-Ray systems.
OVAID are a small, completely voluntary run charity with minimal overheads and we are sure that this has helped us grow and brought us donations from dedicated supporters who see that we can respond rapidly to urgent requests and deliver exactly what is needed by the rescue teams. Of course, we cannot do this alone or even with the help of individual supporters but luckily we have been able to develop positive associations with veterinary businesses. A chance meeting with Michelle and Jane of JAK Marketing at the London Vet Show back in 2015 sowed the seed of an amazing and generous relationship which has grown over the years and seen us able to support the orangutan rescue teams with equipment which would otherwise have been completely impossible. Not only are JAK relentless in their efforts to assist us, they have even ventured into the humid and sweaty tropical rainforest with us to see the very orangutan that they help!
With our extensive knowledge and experience from working within the vet teams, OVAID realised the importance of long-term maintenance of this supplied equipment and the need for continuous training and support. To this end, the charity now also concentrates on providing in situ training by vets and experts and funds a scholarship to bring Indonesian orangutan vets to the UK for an exchange of ideas and further education at centres of excellence including Liverpool University, Chester Zoo, Paignton Zoo and specialist veterinary practices. During the pandemic, the charity (together with BOSF Schweiz) also funded a three-month training programme at BOSF Samboja Lestari by an experienced wildlife/primate veterinarian. This programme facilitated the extensive training of the young vet team and resulted in more than 20 orangutans and 30 sun bear surgeries being carried out initially under supervision but ultimately by the resident vet team themselves.
The welfare of rescued and rehabilitant orangutan is our priority together with supporting the veterinary teams that care for them and we cannot thank James and the whole team at JAK Marketing enough for all that they do for us year in and year out. A phone call to JAK in Yorkshire never fails to bring results - if what we need is not on the shelf (very rare), it somehow miraculously appears in double quick time. As I write this in the Cornish sunshine, we are preparing to resume travelling to Indonesia following the pandemic and will be taking 120kg of donations with us - we are just waiting for the latest box of supplies to wing its way to us from Sheriff Hutton and we will be off!
Dr Nigel Hicks & Sara Fell Hicks
Co-founders
Orangutan Veterinary Aid
www.ovaid.org
*T&Cs apply, ends 31/08/2022.
Categories:
Comments (0)
There are no comments yet.
Write a comment
Tell us what you think about this blog and share your experience with others. Please include only information that is relevant to the blog you are commenting.
There are no comments yet.