BVA Overseas travel grants support veterinary students’ research in Malawi, Kenya, Cambodia and Sri Lanka

Veterinary students Julia Rose Dahm, Emily Freeman, Kate Toland and Bishani Wickrama were announced as recipients of BVA Overseas travel grants during an awards ceremony at our 2019 Members’ Day in Swansea.

The BVA Overseas travel grant scheme supports undergraduate research projects that contribute to sustainable development and good animal welfare overseas. The grants of £500 each aim to give students the chance to gain experience in the prevention and control of exotic and emerging animal diseases; help them develop beneficial life skills such as communication, adaptability and open-mindedness; and, through their work abroad, inspire a lifetime’s commitment to animal health and welfare globally.

Julia Rose Dahm, who is now in her fourth year at the Royal Dick School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh, used the grant for her project this summer on the epidemiology of fleas in smallholder livestock communities in southern Malawi.  Her research aims to quantify the impact of flea burdens on livestock and identify risk factors for transmission. 

Responding to receiving her award, Julia said:

“I am so honoured to have been chosen as a recipient of the BVA Overseas Travel Grant for 2019. I am keenly aware that not enough support is given to smallholder livestock keepers in Malawi, and I am hopeful that my project, through the assistance of Worldwide Veterinary Service: One Mission and BVA, can shed some light on their difficulties and help promote improvements for the health and welfare of the goats and wellbeing of their keepers."  

Emily Freeman, who is also at the Royal Dick School but currently intercalating by doing a Masters, received a grant for her project next year on helminth co-infection relationships and transmission dynamics between livestock and wildlife in rural Kenya.

Emily said: "I am so incredibly honoured to be selected by BVA to receive a Travel Grant for my research project! Through the help of BVA, I will be able to work towards achieving my dream of addressing global livestock health and food security to improve the lives of both animals and the humans who not only love, but rely upon them."

Kate Toland, a third year student at University College Dublin, received a grant for her project this summer looking at conservation implications of inter-annual variation in reproductive phenology and seasonal body condition of wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat (Chaerephon plicatus) in Cambodia.

Kate said: "I want to thank BVA so much for this opportunity.  With the travel award I was able to take part in a wonderful conservation project that gave me a once in a lifetime experience.  I spent this summer working on a research project which focused on the conservation of cave-roosting bats in Cambodia and without the support of BVA, this would not have been possible.”

Bishani Wickrama, in her final year at Cambridge Veterinary School, received a grant for her study of the welfare of captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus maximus) in response to different management strategies in Sri Lanka. Bishani’s research aims to ascertain which management strategies adversely or beneficially affect the welfare of captive elephants in Sri Lanka.

Bishani said: “I am incredibly grateful for the support of BVA in helping to fund my research project taking place in Sri Lanka. This study means a lot to me so I am very thankful to BVA for their generous contribution."

The BVA Overseas travel grant scheme began in 1983 and has so far helped 132 students undertake projects in over 40 different developing countries. Previous recipients have carried out research on a range of topics including the conservation of arrowhead dogfish in the Philippines;  the epidemiology and impact of bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis (TB) in Ethiopia; the prevalence and molecular identification of helminths in wild and captive Sri Lankan elephants; barriers to effective breeding and husbandry in communal alpaca herds in Peru; the conservative control of Wildebeest-associated Malignant Catarrhal Fever on a dairy farm in Kenya; and the prevalence of Canine Heartworm and three other vector-borne diseases in Fiji, among others.