Last night a 19 year old student woke up during the night to find two dog thieves inside his family home! The dog thieves were trying to steal the family’s pet dogs. Yelling broke out and as the dog thieves started escaping the student and his father gave chase. The father was getting his motorbike ready when one of the dog thieves turned around and deliberately fired his electric steel prong arrow into the throat of the 19 year old son. The arrow struck the boy’s throat and fully penetrated his flesh and organs, dropping him to the ground.

This was a deliberate act of attempted murder by the dog thief, to escape being caught stealing dogs.

The son was admitted to the emergency hospital at Cho Moi Hospital and transferred to An Giang General Hospital for life saving emergency surgery. When surgical teams at An Gian Hospital received a “Red Alert” they activated their plan for life saving surgery, concentrating all their resources to save the incoming patient. The team of surgeons took three hours to successfully remove the “extremely dangerous foreign body” from the young man.

Following surgery, Dr. Tran Van Loi, Head of General Planning Department said: “The arrow pierced the muscle area to the cervical vertebra C7-D1. Fortunately the arrow only caused muscle dissection in the neck and chest without causing perforation or damage to blood vessels, nerves, trachea or esophagus. This plays a very important role in preserving the life as well as basic life functions for the patient because only one of the four above anatomic sites is required to be damaged for the patient to die immediately, or left severely disabled causing massive loss of quality of life.”

Today the patient is awake and communicating well with medical staff, with no serious pain in the neck wound area.

The patient, Phan Quoc D., is a first-year student at Can Tho University returning home to celebrate Tet (Lunar New Year) with his family at Cho Moi, An Giang. It is expected that this evening he’ll be able to eat, drink and move lightly in the neck area (which is currently bandaged with stitches holding the wound together).

Huge “thank you” to the medical team of surgeons ‘with full participation of Foreign Specialists’ at An Giang General Hospital who quickly activated their Red Alert emergency plan to save this young man’s life. [Photos courtesy of Dr. Phuong Trang, Ocip surgery.]

Fight Dog Meat will continue to bring you reports from dog and cat meat countries and the wonderful work their rescuers are doing despite no animal protection laws. Turning away or sitting quietly does not end the trade. We’ll keep exposing what is taking place to these animals, and animal lovers. We’re helping local volunteers have a louder voice on a world platform. Ultimately it’s the voice of the country’s own people whom their government will eventually be forced to listen to, for positive change for animals.

Thank you for reading,

Michele Brown
Founder,
Fight Dog Meat.