Haiti ? Animal welfare groups arrived in Haiti on Saturday to help protect earthquake victims by vaccinating stray dogs and maintaining the health of livestock.

One of the biggest animal-related threats posed by the magnitude-7.0 quake, which killed an estimated 200,000 people and left thousands more homeless, is an increased incidence of rabies, said Ian Robinson, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

“When you get situations with a large group of displaced people, and hungry dogs wandering around, then you’ve got the opportunities for dog bites to occur, and that obviously leads to the spread of rabies,” he said.

It is also important to maintain veterinary care for livestock, said Gerardo Huertas, of World Society for the Protection of Animals, because families in crisis need them all the more for food, milk, sale and survival.