The Veterinary Benevolent Fund (VBF) has announced the retirement of its President Dr. Lydia Brown, who had served the maximum of nine years as a trustee and member of the VBF Board.

Lydia became a director of the VBF following the merger of the Fund with the Vet Helpline (VHL) and the Veterinary Surgeons' Health Support Programme (VSHSP) in January 2005.

A past-president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) and former chairman of the RCVS Trust, Lydia was a driving force behind the establishment of the VSHSP in 1999. This support programme was developed in response to the genuine need for a confidential service to treat veterinary surgeons with a wide variety of addictive conditions. Since then she has been involved in the expansion of the Helpline service from a telephone service to an increasingly-widely used email service.

The charity says that it is as a result of Lydia's thoroughness, sympathy and understanding, that very many veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses have been helped to recover from many forms of addictive conditions and health problems. 

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