Satellite Clinic Helps Cape Residents

East Cape residents have to travel an hour and a half into Ōpōtiki with their animals if they want veterinary treatment, but a satellite clinic changed that.

Veterinary Health Centre Ōpōtiki Manager Bridget Malcom lives in Waihau Bay and saw a need for a clinic there.

Often she would have people asking her to have a look at their animals because they "struggled to get to town for their pets appointments."

She said it was also hard on the pets to travel for so long. 

"For a lot of those people it's an hour and a half or more to come to town and that can be pretty hard on the pets, particularly cats driving in and then people want to do a day's shopping and then turn around and drive home again."

To help ease the pressure, she said they decided to run a satellite clinic last year. 

The clinic, which runs once a month, can provide a number of basic services. 

10 to 15 appointments are available each time for basic vet care including routine vaccinations, health checks, cat castrations and microchipping. 

Malcom said similar to Ōpōtiki, desexing is an issue.

The current facilities at Tawaroa Station are limited, so they can only provide male cat castrations. 

However, there are other options available. 

"We do help out there as much as we can in conjunction with the SPCA and sometimes I'll transport cats or dogs to town or home again just to help clients out," she said. 

She said an issue unique to the coast is that dogs can have increased risk of getting the bacterial infection leptospirosis (lepto). 

"In dogs down the coast we find following extreme weather events with the floods and the silt damage that we have had, that there's always an increase in lepto cases. So we will probably see an increase in getting lepto vaccinations done in dogs down there."

Vet Dr Kate Mackersey at Waihau Bay     IMAGE: Supplied

The clinic also recently assisted coastal farmers and residents with animal food following the severe weather in January.

Alongside assisting farmers, Malcom said Ōpōtiki Vets dropped off pallets of dog food to Marae into Pōtaka and Hicks Bay to distribute to those who needed it. 

She said many of the residents could not get into town, so it was important to support everyone in the community. 

"We did have farmers that were affected down there that we supported but there's also a lot of people that just have a cat or a dog or chooks that they couldn't get food for. So it was good to be able to support them as well," she said. 

The community support has been overwhelming she said. 

For many, Ōpōtiki Vets are now the only port of call as State Highway 35 to Gisborne are faced with frequent road closures.

The Waihau Bay clinic has significantly saved the community travel time she said. 

"We've had a number of great comments come back from locals down the coast pretty much from Te Kaha right through to Te Araroa that have been very grateful for the service that we've been providing there."

While there are no plans currently, if demand increased Malcom said there could be more appointments made available. 

The team next head to Waihau Bay on the 26th of February.