Treatment to Elephant by Dr.Amit of IDA

One night I received a call from Thane about an elephant having a burn wound. We reached there and with great difficulty located the elephant. He had a deep wound in his rear. Due to irritation, he used to rub the wound site against a tree or any inanimate object leading to further infection. We probed deep and drained off all the pus and debris and dressed him. Follow up medicines were given to his handler.

Nearby we saw that they are burning gunny bags to keep mosquitoes away from the elephant. But the smoke was troubling him. This is a routine practice adopted by majority of elephant handlers. We told them about the harmful effect of smoke to the elephant and asked them whether they use smoke in their house for the same purpose. Using this analogy, we were able to convince them to not burn anything near the elephant to create smoke which may harm him. In the end we trained the guardian to change the dressing of the wound and for the precautions to be taken.