Due to the pandemic, all of the team's community health programs experienced issues during their transition to remote implementation. The same is true for the responsible pet ownership program. The program was one of those that the group unanimously decided should be terminated due to difficulties caused by its remote implementation and the significant change in priorities and response that the Pandemic imposed on the entire Municipality of Sindangan.

    Some effects were seen in the barangay even after the program was ended and no further interventions were started. When other community projects required sector by sector evaluation in the previous two community rotations, pets were seen on leashes, and some pet owners were seen using the pet cards distributed in 2021 and during the barangay's 2021 pet vaccination. Additionally, all of the pre-test participants (2020) passed the post-test when the post-test evaluation was conducted. No cases of rabies or dog/cat bites have been reported. All of these effects were seen even throughout the last two community rotation of the group even there were no additional intervention since the project's end in 2021.

    Soft copies of the pet cards and the barangay Pet registry were given to the barangay council and the barangay health center. According to the Department of Agriculture Municipality of Sindangan, they have a sufficient budget for anti-rabies vaccine but are having difficulty obtaining them due to a lack of supply, so the barangay still did not have a community-wide pet vaccination for this year. Pet cards and registries, on the other hand, can be used to track anti-rabies pet vaccinations in the barangay.

    These were the group's actions prior to termination, the team's actions hoped to have an impact on moving the community towards the project's long-term goal in the future.

    These were some of pet owners of the barangay and were using the pet cards for their pets seen on the groups last 2 community rotation on the barangay. 

  

  

 

 

ROLDAN F. LEGAL JR.

LEVEL IV, ADZU - SOM

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to the COVID-19 in the country,  the group weren’t able to have our  5th community exposure. For it, the school decided to move it into online platform. The community were able to implement activities while observing the covid-19 protocols. It was attained by way of us (the group) guiding our barangay health workers (BHW) in the community to implement some of our planned actives.

Firstly, the department of agriculture together with Barangay Health Station were able to vaccinate 65 dogs and cats in the barangay for this year. During the said activity, the Barangay Health Station were able to have a list of participants for this years vaccination and pet owners were given pet cards which served as a personal record for their pets. These pet cards were also distributed in the different houses in the different sectors of the barangay. 

Secondly, the group also focused on awareness campaigns about responsible pet ownership and rabies. Our BHW posted tarpaulins in the Barangay Hall, barangay health station, and in the the community elementary school. The BHW distributed pamphlets with topics about rabies and the relation of house pets and covid 19 (together with petcards) in the different sectors in the community. BHWs also conducted health education to the heads of household in the different sectors.

 

Lastly, the group (medical students) created an infomercial that was posted in our facebook page to further extend the campaign to the social media platform.

The implementation of activities were limited because of the pandemic but it would not be possible without the help and participation of the government officials, barangay key persons and officials, barangay health station staff, and the entire community.

ROLDAN LEGAL JR

MEDICAL STUDENT, ADZU-SOM

As per the barangay’s BHW there were no activities done with regards to pet ownership such as pet registration and vaccination due to the current situation. there will be no change in plans aside from observing COVID-19 protocols, and we will be adding on the health teaching about the handling of pets during this pandemic in our next exposure.

ROLDAN LEGAL JR.

ADZU-SOM

            There are 2 issues encountered by the group during this exposure. The supply of the vaccines are not yet on hand with the Department of Agriculture to which the fixed date of vaccination is not yet finalized, and the recording and distribution of pet-cards are implemented during the vaccination also. With this, the group were able to find solutions to such issues and will be discussed in this article.

A major issue on this years dog vaccination in the barangay is the finalization of the schedule of vaccination due to the non-fixed date for procurement of the anti-rabies vaccines by the DA. One solution for this scenario is to have a point person from the barangay to serve as a contact person to contact the DA for the schedule, this role was taken up by  one of the barangay councilor, and with his permission the group distributed flyers informing the barangay that there will be a community wide vaccination between the months of March and April this year, and for the final scheduling they can send a personal message to the number of the  barangay councilor printed on the flyers. The spread of the flyers hope was hoped to spread awareness regarding the vaccination, even though there is no fixed date, they (the community people) can send individual texts to the point person which can contact the DA personally. 

The group created a monitoring sheet and pet-cards which will be used and distributed during the vaccination of dogs in the barangay. The Barangay Motibot pet and vaccination record will be used by the assigned barangay health worker where she will document the name of the head of household, the pets (being vaccinated or not), its type, breed and birth date, and will be signed by the pet-owners to verify that the informations are true and correct . Moreover, pet-cards will be given to the pet owners during the vaccination, it’s contents are the information of the pet owner, and only the pet that will be vaccinated will be recorded, it will be duly  signed by the person who vaccinated the pets. Both will serve as a record for both parties, the pet and vaccination record will be for the barangay, while the pet-cards will be the record for the pet owners so that the vaccination of the pets will be on tract.

Having a positive result to this issues will be hard, but with the help of the barangay council, the health center and the community, majority if not all of the dogs will be vaccinated and recorded not only this year but also in the years to come 

In this exposure we started implementing the planned activities for the responsible pet ownership in the barangay. Before implementing such plans the group discussed the activities for this month to the barangay council with emphasis on information dissemination and vaccination. 

The health teaching scheme comprised of 2 activities. Firstly, The health teaching focuses on Rabies, how it is transmitted, who can transmit the disease, what to do when bitten and what to do to the animal. A pretest was given before and a post-test was given after the lecture , the result showed that after the lecture, 100% of the participants had a passing score in the post-test (equal or greater than 6 out of the 10 questions) and greater than 94% of the total participants showed an  increased scores  from the pretest to post-test scores. This showed that the participants had understood the lecture given by the group. Secondly, the IEC campaign focuses on the same topic with the health teaching, the group provided pamphlets in the campaign which was issued by the Rural Health Unit of the municipality of Sindangan and was authorized by the Municipal Health Officer for reproduction to use as a IEC material for the barangay. The group plans to further reach all the households on their education campaign in the next exposure.

Another major event for this exposure are the dog vaccination, and pet registration. The group coordinated together with the barangay council to request for anti-rabies vaccines for dogs, however there were no specified dates for vaccination yet because the schedule depends on the procurement of the vaccines by the Department of Agriculture which is between March and April for this year.  Moreover, the barangay does not have an existing record regarding pets and their owners. The barangay council requested to the Barangay Health Center to be with the Department of Agriculture during the vaccination to record the information about the pets and their owners along with the distribution of pet cards in all the 7 sectors. This aims to establish a formal data regarding pets in the barangay, which can be used as a draft on creating an ordinance that requires every pet owner to annually register and update the vaccination status of their pets.

Lastly, there is a recent ordinance being implemented in the municipality of Sindangan regarding field control of stray dogs in all their barangay, however the fixed schedule per barangay is to be finalized. In addition, the Department of Agriculture conducts training about dog handling, however, there is no available schedule for this year. In the next exposure the group hopes to that there will be a fixed schedule regarding dog impounding in the barangay as well as to have at least 1 representative per sector in the barangay to be trained by the DA so that they can assist during impounding in their respective sectors.

These are the activities that were set in motion by the group in their 3rd exposure in the barangay, in their future exposure the group aims to accomplish the mentioned activities and set in motion the other planned activities.