An Elephant Hospital on Wheels: How ‘Haathi Sewa’ Reaches Elephants Needing Urgent Care

In Jharkhand, a wild elephant mother was struggling to walk.

A severe injury to her footpad was making movement difficult, and her young calf, around two to three years old, remained with her.

The elephant needed treatment, but getting her to a veterinary facility would bring its own risks. Moving a several-tonne wild animal can cause further stress, especially when it is already injured or frightened. In this case, the team also had to consider the calf that was with her.

So the veterinarians brought the treatment to them.

For nearly 10 days, the team remained in the field, treating the mother and following her recovery.

Cases like this reveal a challenge that begins even before treatment does: how do you care for an elephant that cannot safely be taken to a hospital?

An injured elephant may be standing at the edge of a village, beside a road or in a field. It may have a wound that needs cleaning, a foot that can barely bear its weight or an infection that has gone untreated. A veterinary hospital may have the medicines, equipment and expertise needed to help, while the journey there may be difficult or unsafe.

For wild elephants, capture and transport can also mean moving an already frightened or injured animal away from its herd or familiar surroundings. When a mother has a calf with her, that decision becomes even more complicated.

This is the problem Wildlife SOS is trying to address through ‘Haathi Sewa’, its mobile veterinary initiative. Meaning ‘in service to elephants’, Haathi Sewa takes veterinary expertise, diagnostic equipment and medicines directly to elephants that need care.

The idea is simple: when an elephant cannot safely reach a hospital, the hospital travels to the elephant.

The Better India spoke to Wildlife SOS co-founders Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani, as well as Dr Arun A Sha, Director, Research & Veterinary Operations, to understand what it takes to treat an elephant when veterinary care has to reach the animal where it is.

Bringing X-rays, medicines and treatment into the field 

A mobile veterinary unit changes the first question a rescue team asks.

Instead of beginning with, “How do we transport the elephant?”, the team can begin with, “What does this elephant need here?”

Depending on the situation, Haathi Sewa can carry equipment and medicines for field diagnosis, wound treatment, sedation, emergency stabilisation, fluid therapy and monitoring. Its specialised setup allows veterinarians to conduct X-rays, blood tests and thermal imaging, along with eye examinations, therapeutic ultrasound, laser therapy and foot care.

“If an elephant needs urgent medical care, moving it may not always be the safest option,” explains Dr Sha. “Haathi Sewa is about taking quality veterinary care to elephants where they are.”

The vehicle works like a veterinary clinic on wheels, allowing the team to reach elephants in places where a hospital cannot. Once there, the veterinarians can examine the animal and decide what comes next: whether it can be treated on the spot, needs to be moved, or requires longer-term rehabilitation.

Sometimes, that decision has to be made quickly. With an animal weighing several tonnes, getting it to a hospital can be as challenging as treating the injury itself.

What does a frightened elephant need first? 

Pain does not always look like pain in an elephant.

An elephant may charge, refuse to move or react defensively because it is frightened, injured or responding to trauma. For a rescue team approaching such an animal, understanding what lies behind the behaviour can determine how the intervention proceeds, Wildlife SOS co-founder Geeta Seshamani tells The Better India.

Seshamani says aggression must be understood in the context of what an elephant has experienced. “An elephant that behaves aggressively during a rescue may be frightened, injured or traumatised,” she says.

The team first tries to understand what is making the elephant react that way, whether it is pain, fear or trauma, and then decides how best to approach and treat it.

This becomes especially important during human-elephant conflict, when an injured elephant may already be surrounded by traffic, fields, villagers or frightened onlookers. 

In such moments, the challenge is to treat the animal without adding to its distress. Haathi Sewa allows veterinarians to bring medical care into that difficult, often unpredictable setting.

What elephant treatment looks like on the ground 

One such intervention took the team to Kaziranga, where they were called to attend to Muni, a privately owned female elephant more than 55 years old. Wildlife SOS veterinarians were already in the area conducting healthcare work at the time. 

What initially appeared to be a digestive problem turned out to be severe colic.

The team was able to treat Muni over several days and stabilise her.

For elephants, colic can become life-threatening. Because the team was already nearby, Muni could begin receiving treatment where she was, without the added stress of being moved elsewhere.

Another case was the wild elephant mother we met at the beginning of this story, whose injured footpad had made it difficult for her to walk while her young calf remained with her.

“The team stayed in the field for nearly 10 days, providing treatment and following her recovery,” Dr Sha shares.

Her case brought a different challenge. Every decision about how to approach or treat the mother also had to take the calf into account.

Together, the two cases show how different elephant care can look on the ground. Sometimes the need is immediate treatment for a medical emergency. At other times, the animal’s surroundings, behaviour and the presence of another elephant can shape how that treatment is delivered. 

Who watches over the elephant after the vets leave? 

Every Hathi Sewa programme incorporates training for mahouts and local caregivers, helping them recognise changes in an elephant’s behaviour and identify early signs of illness or injury.

That creates a local layer of care.

A mahout who notices that an elephant is eating less, walking differently or behaving unusually can alert the veterinary team.  “The impact of Haathi Sewa is not limited to the few days that our team spends at a location,” says Dr Sha. “After our teams leave, mahouts and local caregivers continue to reach out when they notice a change in behaviour or any health concern.”

Spotting these changes early can help the team reach an elephant before its condition gets worse. 

When elephant care extends beyond medicine 

Wildlife SOS’s work with elephants began long before Haathi Sewa. Over the years, Satyanarayan says, the organisation has also worked with communities whose lives and livelihoods are closely tied to the landscapes elephants move through.

That matters because elephants often cross the boundaries people have created. They enter farms, move along roads and may encounter electric fences, traffic or people who have never been told how to respond when an elephant appears.

For Satyanarayan, communities therefore become an important part of elephant conservation.

“Community”, he says, includes people living beside a forest, those who encounter elephants on roads, those who identify an injured animal, and people whose livelihoods are affected by wildlife.

When the clinic becomes a classroom 

The mobile veterinary unit has another role too: helping the people around elephants know what to do when something goes wrong.

Alongside treatment, the team works with elephant handlers and communities to explain what signs of distress to watch for, whom to contact when an elephant is injured, and how their own actions can shape an already tense encounter.

Seshamani says the aim is to give people the knowledge and tools to respond more safely when wildlife enters the spaces they share.

That matters because the veterinary team cannot stay forever.

A mahout may be the first to notice that an elephant is eating less. A caregiver may spot a change in the way it walks. A villager may be the one who knows whom to call when an injured animal appears nearby.

When those signs are recognised early, help can reach the elephant sooner. For an animal that may be too large, injured or frightened to move safely, that can make all the difference. 

Sometimes, the elephant cannot make the journey to the hospital. The hospital, then, has to find its way there. 

All pictures by: Wildlife SOS

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