Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Department for Normal and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology of Animals
Prof Valentina Onipko, our contact person at the Poltava State Agrarian University, continues to champion humane education. Thanks to her advocacy and with our support, two departments of the faculty (Department of Plant Protection and Department of Agriculture and Agrochemistry) already switched to animal-free education.
Next, Prof Onipko shared her positive experiences working with our project with her colleagues at the Department of Normal and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology of Animals. The head of the department, Prof Hanna Omelchenko, then reached out to our Ukrainian project partner Dimitrij Leporskij to inquire about the application process for initiating our cooperation.
The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine has established remarkable new bioethical principles regarding the use of animals in experiments and education. According to these guidelines, ‘it is essential to implement modern animal-free technologies for conducting research. These advancements contribute to the development of new treatments and the training of future generations of veterinarians. Modern computer programmes can simulate physiological processes with remarkable accuracy, so that they are often indistinguishable from real observations.’
The university is not well-funded but instead the faculty takes a creative approach to teaching. Together with the students, models of animals and their organs were created using papier-mâché and air-dry clay.
With the help of our donations - a laptop, a projector and numerous software programmes and films - the remaining animal experiments will now be discontinued. Around 80-100 rabbits and mice per year will no longer be killed to study their anatomy from 1 January 2025 and the same number of toads will no longer be decapitated to carry out physiological experiments on their muscles and hearts. A further 80-100 rabbits will no longer be subjected to experiments in which, for example, inflammation and pathological conditions of various organs are induced.
The formal agreement was signed on 3 February 2025. At the meeting, Prof Omelchenko expressed her regret that the department had not taken part in our project years ago. This was mainly due to the former head of the department being rather conservative. However, now the time has come for innovation and change.
Article on the faculty's website about our collaboration >>
From left: Nataliia Avramenko, Associate Professor of the Department of Normal and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology of Animals, Prof. Oleh Kruchynenko, Head of the Department of Infectious Pathology, Hygiene, Sanitation, and Biosafety, Doctor of Veterinary Sciences, Maksym Petrenko, Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor of the Department of Infectious Pathology, Hygiene, Sanitation, and Biosafety, Dimitrij Leporskij, project leader, Prof. Hanna Omelchenko, Head of the Department of Normal and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology of Animals, Ihor Kolomak PhD, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at PDAU for Research, Associate Professor of the Department of Normal and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology of Animals.
Fruitful cooperation.
The donated equipment is already in use.
Animal organs made from air-dried clay.