Jockey Club's chief vet explains why a full-time specialist surgeon would be under-employed in Hong Kong
Recent statements from trainer Ivan Allan to the effect that Hong Kong must be a centre of equine sports medicine excellence if it is to be a centre of racing excellence have placed the Jockey Club's veterinary department squarely under the microscope.
But senior veterinary surgeon Dr Keith Watkins yesterday produced figures to support the notion that a full-time specialist surgeon would be under-employed in Hong Kong. He says major surgery, or that requiring a general anaesthetic - and perhaps a specialist like Dr Robert Lewis, who was brought in by Allan to undertake a new procedure on champion Fairy King Prawn last Friday - racked up only 34 cases last year.
'As important as it is, surgery is a very small part of what we do,' Watkins says. 'I believe our preventive medicine is pretty good and we don't generate a lot of surgery. We have a lower injury rate than in a lot of places, and the requirements are different anyway. In the United States, for example, they do artificial limbs to save a horse for stud. That is not an issue in Hong Kong.'
And what kind of specialist would be right here? That mythical person would have 34 cases year - if he had the skills to perform all possible major surgery. 'In terms of athletic injuries, we don't have the same injuries occurring frequently as they might have in Australia or France or America,' Watkins points out.
'I have been here through many different kinds of training and racing surfaces and the pattern of the injuries changes with the tracks. I remember one form of equitrack which became very tight-packed and hard, and we had horses' cannon bones fracturing into their fetlocks. When the track was changed that injury stopped.'
Then what about the idea of a roster of specialists, employed by the Club but farmed out to other Asian jurisdictions? Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, the Club's director of racing, says that is unworkable, too. 'The cost would be too much for places like Thailand or Malaysia,' Engelbrecht-Bresges says. 'And it is not only about cost. If we went to a specialist and said, 'Look we can afford to pay you regardless of how much you do during the year', that would not work for the vet. People become specialists because they enjoy the practise of their skills and they do not want to be paid to just sit around and twiddle their thumbs.'
As you read this, a pioneering technique called 'laparoscopy', is being performed at Sha Tin Equine Hospital by the United Kingdom's Dr John Walmsley, witnessed by the Jockey Club vets first-hand.
'It involves inserting a metal tube through holes in the side of the abdomen and allows us to examine the horse and undertake surgery internally. It is less invasive, less painful for the animal, and will put him out of training for a few days instead of two months using current techniques,' Watkins explains.
'Considering that visiting specialists and leading-edge practices are in the news this week, it probably seems quite convenient but this kind of invitation to specialists happens frequently.'
Watkins says the list of visiting specialists to Hong Kong has been a long and distinguished one since the 1970s, including world leaders in everything from anatomy to radiology, from microbiologists to farriers. 'Even if it is a procedure which we know how to do, we watch the visiting experts to see if they have updated or changed how they do things,' he says.
One of the benefits has been a leading-edge study of travelling of racehorses. 'With Dr Desmond Leadon, of the Irish Equine Centre, we helped undertake a study of horses travelling here for our International races,' Watkins says. 'For example, we found that one horse in 16 on average will suffer travel sickness. We found normal times for horses to regain weight and for their blood analysis to return to normal. Now we use that in a package sent to trainers bringing horses here to help get them here to do their best.'
Each of the veterinary surgeons at Sha Tin attends conferences 'probably once every two years on average and would receive a constant stream of literature on new techniques and discoveries'.
And Watkins says the ability of surgeons to consult has exploded with information technology. 'We have the capacity to scan X-rays to someone in, say, London, over the Internet. We can get an expert outside opinion without the expert having to be here.'
It will be 21 years this May since Watkins joined the Club. 'My role has altered greatly now to become more managerial,' he admits. 'It is a division of the available labour for the best all-round effectiveness of the department.
'Once, I did all the surgery. Now, my brief is administration and management of the Equine Hospital. There are a lot of regulatory duties, working with stewards, government, liaising on international issues, transport issues, import and export of horses. When I came here there were virtually no exports. Now we export more than 200 horses a year, mostly related to the Club's repatriation of retired horses.'
But if you're asking whether the standard is good enough for Hong Kong racing, Watkins says: 'Consider that we are part of the extra-mural programme in clinical practice at the Faculty of Veterinary Science of the University of Sydney, and have similar standing with many other universities all over the world. That is how universities regard the Hong Kong Jockey Club veterinary department.'
