The doctor who "helps all animals, human and non-human"
By Sharon St Joan, Best Friends NetworkToday, Dr. Roba is a busy emergency room physician at a Houston Hospital. He has chosen to practice in the emergency room because "those are the people who most need help. They have no resources, no insurance, nowhere to go--so they go to the emergency room. I've always been for the underdog," he adds.
Dr. Anteneh Roba recalls that his grandfather had a great love for dogs. He spent most of his school years living with his grandparents in Addis Abba, Ethiopia.
Earlier, at the age of three, Anteneh had been brought to New York by his parents where his father served as a diplomat with the Ethiopian delegation to the U.N.
After their return to Ethiopia, his mother passed away when Anteneh was only five. His father encouraged him to become a doctor, to "find a cure for what had happened" to his mother, and he grew up intent on becoming a physician. The charity he founded along with his cousin, the Amsale Gessesse Foundation, is named after his mother, Amsale Gessesse.
The Ethiopian highlands--A lost world for wildlife"My whole outlook on life is that life is about helping." Dr. Roba credits his little dog Nikita, entrusted to him when his first owner could no longer keep him, with expanding his focus towards "helping all animals, human and non-human". He "fell in love with Nikita. He made me realize how all beings are the same in the eyes of God, or the Universe. He has a heart that I can feel when I hold him. He travels with me everywhere."
Returning off and on to his native Ethiopia, his most recent visit was to focus on wildlife. Traveling with a wildlife specialist and hoping to start a major project that would help Ethiopia's wildlife, Dr. Roba traveled to the Bale Mountains, south east of Addis Abba, where he did a video of the wildlife, to raise awareness of their plight.
The Afro-alpine range in Ethiopia is one of the earth's wildlife "hotspots", where one finds a high concentration of many rare, endangered species. There are around 107 species in Ethiopia officially listed as Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered.
Among these is the Ethiopian wolf. These are the descendants of wolves who came down into Africa to escape the last Ice Age in Europe. When the glaciers retreated, most of the wolves headed back to Europe, but populations remained behind in the Ethiopian highlands where they still exist today. There are only about 400 left.
Leaving the heights of the Bale Mountains, back again in the city of Addis Abba, Dr. Roba, found himself right in the midst of an animal emergency of a different sort.
The exploding population of street dogs in the capitol city had finally hit a crunch point, and the stout efforts of HAPS, the only shelter in Ethiopia with an active spay/neuter program, needed a lot more resources just for the shelter to keep going.
Caught up in working to prevent the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of street dogs in Addis Abba, Dr. Roba is devoting the same energy and optimism that he calls on in any issue that involves "fighting for the underdog"-- always believing that he can reach out to other human beings with a message, and that by working together to help the innocent, one can see miracles begin to happen.
How you can helpTo read more about the current danger to the street dogs of Addis Ababa, or about the many other ways to help animals and people in Ethiopia please go to:
the website of the Amsale Gessesse Foundation:
http://www.amsalefoundation.orgThe website of the Homeless Animals Protection Society:
http://www.haps-eth.org.et/the International Friends Community:
http://network.bestfriends.org/international/news/19258.htmlPhoto: "© Photographer: Eric Gevaert | Agency: Dreamstime.com" /
Ethiopian zebra