Collaboration Between Veterinary and Public Health

Zoonoses

Zoonoses are defined as those diseases and infections that are naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and man, especially those diseases with reservoirs in animals.

  

Collaboration Between Veterinary Services & Public Health

Collaboration between veterinary & public health is defined as “the application of professional veterinary skills, knowledge, and resources to the protection and improvement of human health".

Areas of Collaboration

1.      Control of zoonoses

• It is the rural population that is most affected by many of the zoonoses, so the   collaboration should take a special interest in rural health and offering advice to farmers.
• Another group of hazards are the bites of animals. Thus, collaboration should be made in disaster medicine, especially in relation to animals.

 2.      Food hygiene

• The collaboration of the veterinarian & public health workers nowadays extends to supervision of slaughterhouse hygiene, ante mortem inspection of livestock, and the supervision of the hygienic aspects of the handling and storage of meat.
• The collaboration is also essential in drafting food legislation (of animal origin) and in the establishment of standards for the composition of foods and the maximum levels of biological and non-biological contaminants.

3.      Environmental medicine

• Inter-sectoral collaboration is needed in providing assistance in the detection and prevention of environmental pollution (associated with disposal of animal wastes).

4.      Joint human and animal vaccination

• Effective control of zoonosis may require collaborative joint effort from the medical & veterinary sectors in immunization programmes. For instance, zoonoses causing severe diseases in humans (rabies, anthrax), require prevention in animals using vaccination.

5.      Biomedical Research

• New opportunities for collaboration can be achieved by jointly co-ordinated bio-medical research on anatomical, physiological, pharmacological, microbiological, epidemiological (host-agent interaction) & patho-physiological processes across species including humans.
• The research on emergence of drug resistance in microorganisms living in contact with humans and animals and the risk of resistance transfer from non-pathogenic to pathogenic organisms is another important issue requiring inter-sectoral collaboration.

6.      Education

• The collaboration is essential to play a prominent part in the education of the public and special groups, e.g., farmers, animal owners, etc. on all health matters in which animals are concerned.

7.      Laboratory animal production

• Collaboration can be done in public health laboratories for ensuring a supply of healthy, standardized laboratory animals and also in using appropriate animals for particular experiments, handling, anaesthetizing, and surgery of animals.

Duties of Public Health in Veterinary Services  

(http://www.vet.utk.edu/vph/examples.shtml)

• Educate the public and other professionals about zoonotic diseases
• Serve as experts in controlling the spread of diseases such as avian influenza, brucellosis and other diseases for animals and people.
• Work in laboratories to ensure medicines are safe for human and animal use
• Insure that meat, dairy and poultry products safe for people to eat
• Train health professionals as well as agricultural and food industry workers on agro/bio terrorism prevention and training
• Implement Rabies prevention program
• Demonstrate sustainable development
• Research and appreciation of Human Animal Bond