A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day.
The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets.
The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants.
Photo: AFP
However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they tasted of the bitter medicine, and crankily charging their keepers.
“Giving treatment for TB to elephants is always challenging. Each day we use different methods,” said Buddhika Bandara, a veterinary surgeon from Sri Lanka who flew in to oversee the treatment.
“The animals showed some stress in the beginning, but gradually they adapted to the procedure,” said Bandara, who has helped more than a dozen elephants recover from the illness in Sri Lanka.
Mahout Ali Baloch wakes early daily to stew rice and lentils, mixed with plenty of sugar cane molasses, and rolls the concoction into dozens of balls pierced with the tablets.
“I know the pills are bitter,” the 22-year-old said, watching the elephants splashing under a hose to keep cool.
Four African elephants — captured young in the wild in Tanzania — arrived in Karachi in 2009. Noor Jehan died in 2023 at the age of 17, and another, Sonia, followed at the end of last year. An autopsy showed she had contracted tuberculosis, which is endemic in Pakistan.
Tests carried out on Madhubala and Malika also came back positive, and the city council — which owns the safari park — assembled a team to care for the pachyderms.
Bandara said it is not uncommon for elephants to contract the contagious illness from humans, but that Sonia — and now Madhubala and Malika — had shown no symptoms.
“It was surprising for me that elephants have TB,” said Naseem Salahuddin, head of the Infectious Disease Department at the Indus Hospital and Health Network, who was enrolled to monitor staff.
“This is an interesting case for me and my students — everyone wants to know about the procedure and its progress,” she said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is to meet US President Donald Trump this week, hoping Manila’s status as a key Asian ally would secure a more favorable trade deal before the deadline on Friday next week. Marcos would be the first Southeast Asian leader to meet Trump in his second term. Trump has already struck trade deals with two of Manila’s regional partners, Vietnam and Indonesia, driving tough bargains in trade talks even with close allies that Washington needs to keep onside in its strategic rivalry with China. “I expect our discussions to focus on security and defense, of course, but also
POINTING FINGERS: The two countries have accused each other of firing first, with Bangkok accusing Phnom Penh of targeting civilian infrastructure, including a hospital Thai acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai yesterday warned that cross-border clashes with Cambodia that have uprooted more than 130,000 people “could develop into war,” as the countries traded deadly strikes for a second day. A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops on Thursday, and the UN Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis yesterday. A steady thump of artillery strikes could be heard from the Cambodian side of the border, where the province of Oddar Meanchey reported that one civilian — a 70-year-old man — had been killed and
‘OPPORTUNITY TO ENGAGE’: Antonio Costa and Ursula von der Leyen are to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss EU-China relations and geopolitical challenges Top leaders from China and the EU are to hold a summit in Beijing this week, as the major economic powers seek to smooth over disputes ranging from trade to the Ukraine conflict. Beijing and Brussels have been gearing up to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties, but a suite of squabbles over state subsidies, market access and wartime sanctions have dampened the festivities. A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would visit on Thursday. The statement came after the EU
RSS