Lincoln Park Zoo: Serengeti Health Initiative

The Lincoln Park Zoo has many conservation projects in-situ and ex-situ. One of their extensive programs is the Serengeti Health Initiative (SHI). This initiative was started in 2003 has a lot of facets that involve preservation, benefiting the local people, wildlife surveillance, design and evaluation of vaccination programs, and research on the relationships and interactions between wild animals, domestic animals, and humans. The location that they focus on is Serengeti, Tanzania. The reason that the Lincoln Park Zoo chose this area was to combat the effects of habitat loss, climate change, human impact, and disease. One of their main missions is to enable vaccination for the dogs in communities in Serengeti to reduce the spread of rabies …show more content…
Giving rabies shots to domestic dogs is one of the largest programs involved in the initiative. This involves travelling to the communities surrounding the Serengeti wildlife and setting up clinics to give these vaccinations. The first part of this program that they focus on is education and advertising of the program. To advertise the rabies clinics, personnel had to drive around villages and announce the clinics over loudspeakers which often required 30 minutes to 2 hour commutes without problems. Even without a lot of resources in these villages, the SHI succeeded in vaccinating from 400 to 1,000 dogs or more every day. They also distributed posters about rabies awareness and treatments for bites. The SHI also educates students and teachers in the area to spread awareness to the youth. To go even further, they would take blood samples of canines and do interviews with individual people to inform them of the dangers and effects of rabies injuries. With the help of the Serengeti National Park rangers, the disease incidences were monitored. Surveillance of the lions, hyenas, and painted dogs is also an important part of this study because it assists in studying the impact that the vaccinations are having on the wildlife populations. Through the Lincoln Park Zoo specifically with the help of Dr. Rachel Santymire, they produced field kits with the ability to preserve samples without the use of electricity or refrigeration. This …show more content…
They accomplished this by setting up rabies clinics in 185 communities surrounding the Serengeti National Park. There has been no documented cases of canine rabies in the Serengeti National Park since the SHI was initiated. Distemper has also been reduced among the big cats of the Serengeti since the start of this program. Although the initiative has seen great success especially in the reduction in rabies cases, the Serengeti Health Initiative plans to continue to spread awareness and help eradicate other problems affecting wildlife, people, and domesticated animals in the Serengeti