A caring vet is preparing to swap the North East for West Africa to ease the suffering of street dogs and join the fight against rabies.
Rebecca Dobinson has supported dogs owned by homeless people in the North East and volunteers as a vet for Street Paws, which provides outreach services in Newcastle and Sunderland. But now she is planning to travel to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, to continue her work tackling rabies, which is usually spread to humans by bites from infected dogs.
Rabies is a grave problem in Freetown which is overwhelmed by street dogs which have been abandoned or made homeless in the wake of the civil war and Ebola epidemic.
