President's Welcome to the WVA Site

I am very pleased to welcome you to the homepage of the World Veterinary Association or the 'WVA' as we in the Association call it. I would like to give you a very brief overview to our international veterinary medical association - we are very proud of it.

The WVA is a federation of over 80 national veterinary medical associations, representing somewhere between ? and 1/2 million veterinarians throughout the World. We also have regional, specialist, and observer veterinary association members. As a result, the WVA is the internationally recognized representative of global veterinary medicine. It was founded in 1863 in Hamburg, Germany, but was completely reorganized in 1997. Last October, in Paris at OIE headquarters, the WVA developed a new and ambitious strategic plan in which we have organized for greater efforts in support of the activities of our global veterinary profession. This includes identifying areas of interest to the veterinary profession in the strategic plans of international animal and human health, organizations that the WVA has collaborative agreements with: the OIE, FAO and WHO.

One of the up most important areas is an increased focus on current animal welfare issues that can be affected by global veterinary medicine. The WVA recognizes and supports that certain provisions of care are essential to animal welfare and every practical effort should be made to achieve them. We also believe that welfare standards should be based on available scientific evidence and internationally agreed standards. Concepts of animal welfare should be visible in every veterinary curriculum.

In the arena of global education of veterinarians, the WVA has a goal to raise the level of minimum standards to be acceptable for existing accreditation systems. We offer our leadership to establish a global accreditation system for veterinary education and training establishments based upon networking of the existing systems and mutual recognition of harmonized procedures. We have also undertaken the task to define a veterinary oath that can be useful globally, and to define good veterinary practice in a global code.

An important annual activity of the WVA is World Veterinary Day (WVD). The WVD objective is to publicize that veterinary medicine encompasses a majestic array of experts that contribute widely throughout the world. The WVA's celebration of an annual World Veterinary Day on the last Saturday of April has contributed to a positive image, in the eye of the public, of the veterinarian's activity in animal health and animal welfare issues.

Lastly, but not an insignificant item, is the World Veterinary Congress (WVC). The last WVC was held in July 2005 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The WVA has a World Veterinary Congress every 3 years; therefore, the next Congress will be in 2008. The venue will be exceptional - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The theme of the 29thCongress will be: "Come Celebrate Our Diversity". Please write the dates of 27-31 July, 2008 on your calendars. It will be my distinct honor to welcome you to the great 29th World Veterinary Congress in beautiful Vancouver.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Leon Russell, President