Brooke Hospital

The Brooke Hospital for Animals (BHA) Egypt is a non-governmental organization registered in Egypt, dedicated to improving the lives of the working equines in poor urban and rural communities across the country. Our strategic goal is improving the equine welfare of 250,000 equines in Egypt by 2014 and to achieve our strategic objectives: 1. Available, Accessible, Affordable, Acceptable and Quality equine care services for 250,000 equines. 2. Enabling 70,000 equines' owners/users and their communities to improve good equine welfare practices. 3. Influencing and cooperating with governmental and non-governmental organizations in four regions to contribute to equine welfare issues. 4. Promotion of Brooke Egypt brand & slogan making it synonymous with evidence-based improvements in equine welfare, thereby increasing the received funds. 5. Organizational development and staff capacity building to strengthen BHA Egypt capabilities and systems to achieve its strategic goals. There are 1,202,000 equine animals working in Egypt as indicated by the official governmental census report of 2008. Most of the working equines across Egypt carry out a wide range of types of work under very difficult circumstances and are exposed to high risk of poor animal welfare. The majority of them is used for transportation of passengers such as tourist carts in Luxor, carrying loads such as domestic waste materials for vulnerable communities and many thousands work in brick kilns in Helwan near Cairo. The main welfare problems are overloading, beating, mutilation (mainly firing), dehydration, heat stress, lameness and hoof problems and contagious diseases such as equine influenza. In Egypt the attention of BHA program and investment has been focused on providing free veterinary treatment through the static and mobile clinics. More recently, over the past 5 years, additional activities have been undertaken such as community engagement, working in partnership with community based organizations and other local structures such as rural guides. Staff capacity has been built on the use of welfare assessment methodologies to measure whether animal welfare is improving.