Situated on Dubai Al Ain road roughly between Dubai Outlet Mall and the 7’s is the brand new Dubai Camel Hospital. The world’s first medical facility 100% dedicated to the health and well-being of the countries camel population. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/videos
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00:00Dubai has silently achieved another world's first. This time, it wasn't announced with
00:08fanfare or a Guinness World Record, but instead was launched quietly with almost no publicity
00:13at all. Situated on Dubai Al Ain Road between Dubai Outlet Mall and The Sevens is the brand
00:18new Dubai Camel Hospital, the world's first medical facility 100% dedicated to the health
00:24and well-being of the country's camel population.
00:26We have the camel, which is the most important animal, I think, in the region. If you think
00:36about breeding, racing, that's why the government here, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, he thought
00:46to build this hospital to help these sick camels. And especially, you know, after races
00:55or during the races, there will be a lot of, you know, fractures. So there is no such hospital
01:04in the region to treat this type of cases. So from there, you know, the idea came that,
01:10you know, the need to build a hospital like this was must.
01:16The 40 million dirham facility had a soft opening in 2017 and was almost instantly flooded
01:21with patients as word spread quickly among the population. Now officially open, it boasts
01:26some world-class technology mostly adapted from the horse racing world to diagnose and
01:31treat camels.
01:32You know, camel has got a very long neck. So we cannot reach with the normal length
01:37of endoscope to the stomach. And that's why we have made specially a long arm endoscope,
01:46five meter long arm endoscope we have just custom made for our camel needs.
01:52The vast majority of the patients admitted to the hospital come from the camel racing
01:55scene in the UAE, and the injuries that doctors encounter in the hospital are what you would
02:00expect from such camels.
02:02So we're seeing a lot of orthopedic cases, including fractures, joint problems, ligament
02:06problems, tendon problems. We're seeing a lot of soft tissue issues, abdominal problems,
02:13head and neck problems. So again, a very sort of broad spectrum, if you like, of surgical
02:18conditions are coming in. A lot of lameness conditions coming in as well. A lot of upper
02:22respiratory issues too.
02:24But how close are camels to other equine species? And how does veterinarian training need to
02:29adapt to suit needs specific to camels?
02:31Yeah, I mean, the camel is kind of in between the horse and the cow, let's say, with a bit
02:36of giraffe thrown in. And so, you know, using those species brought into the camel world
02:43is actually, the transition is not as big as you think. The many conditions are very
02:48similar, actually. And so we can use the same approaches, the same technology, the same
02:53experiences, both pre, intro and post-op, to basically tackle pretty much every single
02:59case you're going to come across in the camel.
03:01The Dubai Camel Hospital has recently successfully performed an operation on a racing camel that
03:05would previously have left the camel severely lame or worse before the hospital was opened.
03:10A world's first for the hospital and for the UAE.
03:13So a humeral fracture is your long bone here. Okay, that's called the humerus. Okay. And
03:19this camel has sustained it as possibly a stress fracture initially that then went on
03:23to catastrophic fracture. And so we went in there to repair it using the latest locking
03:29plate technology. And so, yeah, that is quite a groundbreaking surgery in the camel world.
03:36And what is the success rate of a specialized surgery like this? And will the camel ever
03:39race again after recovery is complete?
03:41Well, the success rate of these, you know, we, I would probably toss a coin in the air
03:46and give you a 50-50 split on that. It will certainly never return to racing, but, you
03:50know, the aim of this particular repair was to get this camel sound enough so it can breed
03:56comfortably afterwards. And so that's kind of the sort of, you know, the severity of
04:00the injury it had. It will never return to racing, but we can fix it well enough with
04:05the right technology, the right team, the right aftercare, the right physiotherapy to
04:09get it back to breeding soundness.
04:11With the ability to treat minor to severe ailments, the Dubai Camel Hospital is a true
04:15blessing to the country's camel population and is helping to advance Dubai's heritage
04:20of camel husbandry into a new era. Logan Fish for Gulf News.