Patty, 17-year-old chimpanzee, was the first patient of Mobile Clinic of Save the Chimps Sanctuary. It started to work a few days ago and it took a year and a half to be built, due to the donation of US 100 thousand of a anonymous donator.

This mobile clinic – which can be installed in a small bus or family truck – goes to the different enclosures/islands of the sanctuary in order to avoid that the chimpanzees are taken out. This was the dream of the sanctuary’s founder, Dr. Carole Noon, who passed away recently and was not able to see her dream coming true.

According to Carole, the chimpanzees of every group became stressed when were taken out of their enclosures to be treated in another building of the sanctuary. Once you take the clinic until them, the stress is notably reduced and their partners would understand that that was a treatment to heal some of a disease.

Patty was sedated early in order to the eruptions in her skin be observed. It consists of a chronic disease she suffers since she was 7 years old. The origin is unknown and it causes infections in her body. While she had been examined, her partner Thoto observed calmly from an observation station in the enclosure.

The last 89 chimpanzees who must come from the extinct “torture lab” of Coulston Foundation, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, must arrive at Florida in a year. The next group of 10 will arrive by the end of this month. Each chimpanzee migration costs US 25 thousand, which have been raised dollar by dollar together with American society.

Dr. Pedro A Ynterian
President, GAP Project International