KARACHI – A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants suffering from tuberculosis that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day.
The jumbo effort by staff at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets.
The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000-kilogram (8,800-pound) elephants.
But it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they tasted of the bitter medicine, and crankily charging their keepers.
“Giving treatment for TB to elephants is always challenging. Each day we use different methods,” said Buddhika Bandara, a veterinary surgeon from Sri Lanka who flew in to oversee the treatment.
“The animals showed some stress in the beginning, but gradually they adapted to the procedure,” said Bandara, who has helped more than a dozen elephants recover from the illness in Sri Lanka.
Mahout Ali Baloch wakes early daily to stew rice and lentils, mixed with plenty of sugar cane molasses, and rolls the concoction into dozens of balls pierced with the tablets.
“I know the pills are bitter,” the 22-year-old said, watching the elephants splashing under a hose to keep cool.
Four African elephants — captured very young in the wild in Tanzania — arrived in Karachi in 2009.
Noor Jehan died in 2023 at the age of 17, and another, Sonia, followed at the end of 2024. An autopsy showed she had contracted tuberculosis, which is endemic in Pakistan.