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Hello and welcome to Health Check from the BBC.
I'm still in Malawi and I'm in a settlement that's only about 5, 10 minutes from Lilongwe.
And I'm with some vets from, from the Lilongwe Society for the Protection and Care of Animals.
And we're still looking at one health, this idea of improving the health of animals to also improve the health of humans and vice versa as well.
And today we're looking at something very specific.
And in front of me there are three tables and they've all got blankets on them and they've all got what look like dead dogs, but they're not dead unconscious dogs on the tables lying on their backs with their tongues hanging out.
You can see their teeth and their paws are up in the air and they look as if they're fast asleep because in fact they've been anesthetized because this is actually a neutering day.
And people bring along their dogs and I can see some people queuing here and then they're waiting for their turn.
We're under a kind of covered shelter and it's raised up on concrete so everyone else is standing around the edge.
But there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, at least six different vets operating on dogs.
There are other dogs lying on the floor who've had their operations and are now recovering.
And this is all in an attempt to stop the spread of rabies.
My name is Dr.
Madeleine Nyawanza and I'm the Programs Director of Lilongwe SPCA in Malawi.
This is an amazing sight that we're in a village, we're in the middle of a huge sort of dusty area and you've set up these tables and there are these dogs flaked out on these tables.
What's the whole idea of this day?
Okay, so today we are doing community sterilizations.
We are spaying dogs for free in this community because we have a very huge population of stray dogs in this high density, low income area that we are.
And we want to control the breeding so that we also in a way help prevent rabies.