by Phil Stewart, Vetscript Editor
Source:
Frazer Allan, head of Massey University's Institute of Veterinary Animal and Biomedical Sciences, opened the conference plenary programme of the Pan Pacific Conference with an address on the drivers for the future shape of the profession and a reflection on how challenges confronting veterinarians can be turned into opportunities.
Frazer Allan: veterinary schools should focus on skills needed for all aspects of veterinary life and leave specialisation to the postgraduate space.
He said Massey's current curriculum review would take five years to start flowing through into the practising workforce once it had been implemented, and was being carried out in tandem with NZVA's review of continuing professional development needs.
Starting with an overview of the headline issues that are informing the curriculum review, he began with "One Health". While a well-known term, he doubted the full implications were well understood. Nearly two-thirds of human pathogens have animal origins and since the 1940s there had been one new or re-emerging human disease.
While recent diseases such as SARS or BSE grabbed the headlines, the established diseases continued to take a big toll - rabies, for example, killed 55,000 people a year.
Human disease challenges would intensify as populations became more mobile, densely housed and closely associated with animals. Poverty, and the continuing appetite for "bush meat" also provided zoonotic disease pathways, Allan said. The increasing numbers of food animals processed would provide another pathway for zoonoses.
Poor animal health management in developing countries, lack of vaccination and abuse of antibiotics in food animals would add to human health problems. He said attempts to deal with the effects of zoonoses could be misguided - such as the slaughter of 1.1 million pigs in Malaysia after they were infected with Nipah virus from bats. Collaboration between public health experts, veterinarians and field ecologists could have resulted in earlier intervention and unnecessary animal wastage in cases such is these, Allan said.
Arthropod-borne viral diseases would continue to spread as climate change extended the range of disease vectors, Allan said. Australia and northern New Zealand could be in the firing line and veterinarians would have an important role collaborating with, or working within, public health and environmental agencies.
This collaborative approach presented new opportunities for veterinarians.
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