‘Dogs Without Borders’ trains rescue dogs to diagnose illness in remote communities

A new campaign is setting out to prove that old dogs can, indeed, learn new tricks. But instead of mastering the art of sitting, barking and rolling over, these rescue pups turned miracle workers will be trained to catch cancer before it progresses in places that lack basic medical services.

VMLY&R is teaming up with KDog to launch Dogs Without Borders, a project that offers up a scalable solution to two long standing issues—stray dogs and remote communities without basic diagnostics. 

“It gives people living in isolated  areas access to diagnostic healthcare for the first time,”  said Dr. Carla Ismael, KDog CEO.

More than half of the world’s population has limited access to basic medical services, according to Dogs Without Borders. In some areas, patients must travel for days to reach hospitals and undergo basic health checks, even though early detection has been proven vital to recovery. 

At the same time, stray dog kennels across the world are overflowing, leading to millions of dogs being euthanized each year. 

KDog, a canine medical detection unit founded by the Curie Institute in Paris, is giving man and his best friend a second chance at life with a training initiative that homes in on dogs’ natural ability to sniff out cancer and other diseases with nearly 100% accuracy. 

“Dogs detect particles at such a low level that even our best machines sometimes cannot,” said veterinary neurologist Christophe Dupont. 

Dupont is just one of the voices featured in the two-minute case study above, which follows a team medical detection dogs as they deliver and test bone-shaped capsules to underserved communities in the Amazon and the Sahara Desert.

These whimsically-shaped odor collection kits contain materials and instructions which allow patients to collect and preserve samples from the privacy of their own home. 

Local medical detection dogs are then tasked with smelling the samples for early onset signs of cancer, malaria, diabetes and COVID-19. If disease is detected, the patient is made aware and sent next steps for analysis and treatment. 

Executives from VMLY&R and KDog are hopeful that the wide-scale execution of this project will extend and save countless lives, both canine and human. 

“It’s a privilege to launch such a sustainable, symbiotic and scalable solution that can change health outcomes for so many,”  said Claire Gillis, CEO of VMLY&R Health.