Close watch on Iman - the last female Sumatran rhino

KOTA KINABALU: Severely ill Iman, the nation’s last female Sumatran rhino, continues to be under the close watch of her doctors.

The amount of food and fluid consumed as well as how much she urinates and defecates are now being monitored as Wildlife Department veterinarians hope for Iman’s health to improve.

“We have given her 15 litres of fluid and supplements apart from antibiotic, painkillers, vitamin K and gastric protectant,” department director Augustine Tuuga said yesterday.

“Iman defecated twice today and urinated. She has only consumed three stalks of leaves and some water,” he added.

Tuuga said Iman was drinking a small amount of water but refused fruits including banana, papaya and mango, he said.

He said Iman continued to bleed from the uterus and dark, partially clotted blood was flowing down the vagina.

“We will start on a very low dose of diazepam (a type of antidepressant medication) later to stimulate her appetite,” he said.

He noted that Iman was still actively moving in her night stall.

Iman began bleeding from a uterine leiomyoma tumour last week but veterinarians initially faced difficulty in treating her as she refused to leave her mud wallow at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Lahad Datu.

The rhino eventually left the mud wallow and Iman’s carers immediately began giving her medication.

Iman was rescued from Sabah’s Danum Valley in 2014 and was later placed at Tabin for a captive breeding programme to save the species.

Iman and another female rhino, Puntung, as well as a male rhino, Tam, were the last three Sumatran rhinos in the country and scientists had hoped to get them to breed to revive the species.

However, wildlife experts had to euthanise Puntung in June after its skin cancer spread, causing the animal to suffer greatly.

Any hope of a breeding programme was further dashed when scientists were unable to recover any eggs from Puntung’s ovaries.