Veterinarians Without Borders North America: Celebrating 20 years of greater access to veterinary care

INTRODUCTION: 20 YEARS OF GLOBAL VETERINARY VISION

In May 2025, Veterinarians Without Borders/Vétérinaires Sans Frontières North America (VWB/VSF) celebrated 20 y of operations. What began as a shared vision among 5 veterinarians in Guelph, Ontario, has grown into a globally trusted One Health organization.

Founded in 2005, VWB/VSF’s first decade (1) laid the groundwork: shaping our early identity, establishing long-standing relationships, and demonstrating that animals, the environment, and people are inseparable in efforts to improve their health and well-being. Since then, VWB/VSF has undergone a period of transformational growth — evolving from a primarily volunteer-driven initiative into a recognized international development organization. Over the past decade, we have expanded to more than 13 countries, mobilized over $40 million in funding, and increased our annual reach to 98 451 people and 848 458 animals. Our portfolio now spans humanitarian and disaster response, international development, and companion animal work, all delivered through a gender-responsive One Health lens that drives both immediate and long-term impacts.

VWB/VSF now has a continental presence across North America, having marked a major milestone with the formal establishment of VWB North America in 2023. This rebranding brought together operations in Canada and the United States, strengthening cross-border collaboration and enabling expansion into the remote North through programming partnering with Indigenous communities. This work has since provided veterinary outreach, training, and knowledge sharing in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and beyond, addressing long-standing service gaps.

Through VWB/VSF’s global initiatives, more than 400 volunteers, including veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and other specialists have been deployed to support local systems and strengthen animal and public health. Collectively, these efforts have reached more than 1.3 × 10⁶ animals, including over 480 000 (98% livestock and 2% companion animals) treated for diseases and 580 000 helped during emergencies. This has improved the lives of more than 1 × 10⁶ people worldwide in over 3000 communities.

This strengthened capacity has been tested and proven in some of the world’s most complex crises; from responding to armed conflict in Ukraine, climate emergencies in the Northwest Territories, adapting program delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, and navigating the currently shifting development landscape. VWB/VSF has consistently demonstrated the ability to mobilize expertise, forge enduring partnerships, and deliver community-led solutions despite challenges.

Throughout this growth, VWB/VSF has remained firmly committed to its mission: improving global animal health and advancing One Health outcomes that strengthen the interconnections among people, animals, and the environments they share. This article reflects on VWB/VSF’s continued journey over the past decade. We begin by revisiting the guiding approach that shapes our work, exploring the organization’s growth and milestones, highlighting key examples of our One Health programming in action, examining our response to challenges and disruptions, and concluding with our vision for the decade ahead.

OUR GUIDING APPROACH: ROOTED IN ONE HEALTH, EQUITY, AND LIVELIHOODS

Relationships have always been central to VWB/VSF’s work; among animals and people, communities and ecosystems, local needs and global partnerships. From the outset, VWB/VSF has been committed to community-driven animal health as a pathway to improved human and environmental well-being.

During our first decade, the organization operated within an EcoHealth framework, the leading model for integrated work on human and environmental health at the time. Yet, even in this early period, we championed the importance of animals, embedding them in programs, and approaching animal health as inseparable from human well-being and sustainable local economies. This approach has continued to shape our longstanding focus on integrated livelihoods, grounded in the essential roles of animals in food security, income generation, climate resilience, and community health.

In 2018, VWB/VSF and the broader VSF International network formally adopted a One Health approach to provide a clearer articulation of the principles we had long practiced, at a time when connections across species, systems, and health were even more globally relevant (given the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020). The shift to One Health reflected a natural evolution from EcoHealth and an opportunity to sharpen our focus.

Over the past 10 y, gender equity has also emerged as a core operational principle. This commitment, aligned with Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), is incorporated into the design, programming, and monitoring and evaluation of international projects to ensure that women and girls, who, globally, tend to be the caretakers of animals and on the frontlines for zoonotic diseases, are equitably supported.

Today, One Health, integrated livelihoods, and gender equity serve as unifying threads across VWB/VSF’s work. These principles are reflected in our Theory of Change, a framework of interconnected areas that guides all aspects of projects, centered on: disease prevention, integrated livelihoods, equitable access, emergency preparedness and response, capacity building, and One Health systems.

ONE HEALTH IN ACTION

Since 2015, VWB/VSF’s programming has deepened focus around 3 priority areas:

1. emergency response;

2. community-led capacity strengthening; and

3. innovation.

Together, these pillars reflect our growing ability to meet immediate needs while driving sustainable, long-term change.

Emergency management and humanitarian response

VWB/VSF’s emergency management and humanitarian response focus, which follows the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS), is rooted in the recognition that animal and human outcomes are deeply interconnected, especially during times of crisis. For example, people will often refuse to evacuate without their companion animals (2) and livestock losses during crises pose severe long-term risks to livelihoods and food security in subsistence communities (3). When viewed through a One Health lens, the human-animal connections become central to emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.

This connection has been especially clear in Ukraine, where VWB/VSF has partnered with local animal welfare organizations since 2022 to address both the immediate and long-term needs of over 150 000 animals impacted by the ongoing war. As the conflict displaces families and destabilizes veterinary services, VWB/VSF supports local partners to evacuate and reunite animals with their families, rebuild animal shelters and animal health infrastructure, and provide training to small-scale farming to bolster local food security.

During the same year as the launch of our Ukraine program, VWB/VSF supported our first international environmental emergency response in reaction to the catastrophic floods in Pakistan to distribute food aid and support the health of dairy goats. A year later, in 2023, VWB/VSF mobilized a national emergency response when devastating wildfires forced evacuations across the Northwest Territories. Such as in Behchokò, where, when evacuees initially had nowhere to go that accepted pets, VWB/VSF team members drove to meet evacuees and coordinate the evacuation and temporary housing of over 150 animals. This response, although initially reactive, was expanded to support local partners, communities, and governments in coordinating subsequent evacuations in Fort Smith, Hay River, and Yellowknife — ensuring that people and their companion animals could safely evacuate.

Lessons learned from the Northwest Territories, alongside wildfire responses in Maui and across Alberta and Manitoba, in addition to our responses to the earthquakes in Turkey and Myanmar, have helped VWB/VSF shape an adaptable emergency response model that is grounded in One Health and strong local partnerships.

Community-led solutions and capacity strengthening

Whether in Canada or abroad, locally driven change is essential for achieving long-term, sustainable outcomes. We prioritize localization efforts by supporting our partners through capacity-building efforts that strengthen veterinary expertise and systems within their communities.

Since our earliest days, VWB/VSF has championed the Community Animal Health Worker (CAHW) model as a cornerstone of community-led action and capacity strengthening. In regions with limited to no access to veterinary care, CAHWs bridge critical service gaps by administering vaccines, treating diseases, promoting good animal care practices, and in helping to combat antimicrobial resistance (4). To date, VWB/VSF has trained and supported over 10 000 CAHWs in countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Ghana, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Northern Canada, with a deliberate focus on training and retaining women CAHWs. By continuing to support and build on the CAHW model, VWB/VSF helps ensure that essential animal health services become more accessible, community-driven, and sustainable.

In South Sudan, where conflict, humanitarian, and climate emergencies have displaced millions, CAHWs have been integral to supporting difficult to reach pastoralists and rural livestock keepers. VWB/VSF has maintained continuous operations in the country since 2013, reaching more than 78 000 smallholder farmers and 390 000 animals, in which CAHWs have been vital to improving long-term animal health and food security outcomes. In 2022–2023 alone, VWB/VSF and our partners trained and equipped over 200 CAHWs and vaccinated over 208 000 animals. In a country in which 70% of people rely on their livestock for food and income, CAHWs have directly contributed to keeping families fed, and people and animals alive.

CAHWs thus serve as a direct link between animal and human health. When linked to regional disease surveillance systems, such as in Ghana and Cambodia, or to multisectoral One Health Teams (OHTs) the work of CAHWs contributes to stronger and overall, more sustainable health systems.

These One Health Teams, first launched by VWB/VSF in Vietnam, bring together diverse professionals such as CAHWs, para-veterinarians, Community Health Workers, and Environmental Specialists to collaboratively operationalize the One Health approach. These teams strengthen cross-sector partnerships and promote long-term resilience. Today, OHTs are being trained and mobilized across VWB/VSF programs in Rwanda, Senegal, and South Sudan.

The success of these teams reflects a broader evolution in how VWB/VSF strengthens systems by moving beyond service delivery and towards mutual learning and sustained capacity. Guided by our early commitment to avoid helicopter medicine (short-term volunteering that doesn’t support building local capacity), our international volunteer-sending programs have fostered long-term and reciprocal partnerships grounded in shared learning and increasing local capacity. More than 200 Canadian volunteers (ranging from veterinarians and epidemiologists to communications and gender specialists) have shared their expertise and skills with local partners, communities, and staff to advance sustainable development and create lasting change, well beyond their placements.

Innovation and transformative partnerships

A transformation has unfolded in the past decade of VWB/VSF operations across veterinary care, data collection, and research advancement. Building on our academic roots, our earliest programming was deeply research-based, working closely with universities across Canada to forge partnerships and garner expertise. Over the past decade, we have deepened and expanded these relationships, especially with international research institutes and universities with dedicated One Health departments. These connections have translated into on-the-ground impacts in our programming.

In Kenya, where dairy farmers on the slopes of Mount Kenya rely on their cow’s milk production for income generation, expertise from Canadian universities, partnered with on-the-ground volunteers, has had meaningful outcomes. Through evidence-based interventions in areas such as cow housing, hygiene, and feeding practices, dairy farmers have seen increases in milk production ranging from 180 to 320%, enabling them to pay school fees and household necessities.

Beyond Africa, collaboration with academic partners has also driven innovation across Asia. A focus on climate-smart interventions with high value for money — such as cricket production within a One Health framework — is one such example. Across Southeast Asia, crickets have historically only been harvested seasonally from the wild. In Laos, we piloted a research-led approach to introduce year-round cricket rearing, care, processing, and value chain development. This innovative and low-cost program was so effective in increasing household nutrition and income, that the model and approach to insect rearing was scaled to Cambodia and South Sudan (5).

In Cambodia, this model was integrated within a gender-responsive One Health framework. Cricket farming was combined with integrated agro-ecological practice and expanded access to regional animal health services to build a holistic One Health system. As a result, families raising crickets and chickens saw their income grow by 300% and reported increased knowledge of sustainable food production.

The innovation at VWB/VSF has also expanded digitally to include the launch of several Telehealth platforms in Ghana, Ukraine, and Northern Canada, enabling communities with limited veterinary infrastructure and access to veterinarians. These platforms have provided life-saving care to animals that would have otherwise received no support, while simultaneously serving as tools for equity; expanding access to care, training, and knowledge in historically underserved areas.

In parallel, expansion of digital surveillance tools, such as those developed in Ghana, has strengthened community-led, climate-resilient livestock systems. These tools enable real-time disease monitoring, rapid detection, coordinated responses, and improved decision-making in dynamic environments. VWB/VSF has continued to remain at the forefront of digital advancement through partnerships utilizing Artificial Intelligence in livestock training, care, and support to smallholder farmers around the world.

As a member of VSF International, VWB/VSF North America has been a part of a global team working alongside WOAH to create standardized training for Community Animal Health Workers. This work is a step towards official recognition, support, and increased access to veterinary care in remote regions across the globe.

Looking ahead while navigating complexity

Although the past decade has been a period of substantial growth and positive change for the organization, it has also brought its fair share of challenges and unprecedented global events. Climate emergencies have intensified, with record-setting wildfires, floods, and droughts impacting nearly every region in which we operate. Conflict-zones, such as Ukraine and South Sudan, present complex and ever-changing working situations. Recent cuts to international development funding, such as USAID, have been felt across the industry, resulting in impacts on our partners and their available external funding, reshaping the sector for the foreseeable future.

Looking back to the COVID-19 pandemic, this generational event had major impacts, halting travel and affecting volunteer placements — but all the while, VWB/VSF adapted to changing needs. Our current volunteer sending programs, both launched in 2020, had to pivot to provide remote placements for Canadians, recruit local national volunteers, and even transition trainings to local radio. Through all these challenges and global events, VWB/VSF, staff, partners, donors, and the communities we work with have navigated these complexities together.

With our 2025–2030 Strategic Plan, VWB/VSF enters its third decade with a charted roadmap to guide future programming. This plan represents a bold evolution of our One Health vision by increasing global veterinary access, centering localization, disaster response, and gender equity as drivers of sustainable impact. It builds on our 2 decades of experience to strengthen partnerships, scale innovation, and position VWB/VSF as a continued global leader in community driven One Health action.

The story of VWB/VSF has been one of growth and collaboration in the pursuit of health and well-being for all — environments, people, and animals alike. The next decade is an opportunity to integrate innovation and digital transformation with technical expertise and evidence-based research to build resilient communities where animals, people, and ecosystems thrive.