Yet implementation imperative to NAVMEC's success
Source:
September 1, 2010
Woodrow Wilson once said, "It is easier to change the location of a cemetery than to change the school curriculum." The fact that this quote came up no less than three times at the third and final North American Veterinary Medical Education Consortium meeting reinforces the arduous task before the board and the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges.

The July 14-16 meeting at the Oquendo Center for Clinical Education in Las Vegas had the most ambitious agenda of the meetings to date. Nearly 200 participants were asked to synthesize information from the first two meetings; discuss the current state of accreditation, testing, and licensure and create recommendations for change; and, ultimately, come up with ways to implement recommendations that come from NAVMEC.

"We're going to create our own destiny for the profession. We have all aspects of veterinary medicine to help formulate those opinions and, hopefully, we can take those and move them forward," said Dr. Bennie I. Osburn, dean of the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and chair of the NAVMEC board of directors.

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Source:
Animal welfare plays an increasingly important role in our society: societal views on the use of animals by humans and on the human – animal relationship are changing rapidly within many European countries.

Because of these interest and concerns, various European countries have set up Animal Welfare Councils to provide national governments and others with sound scientific and ethical advice about animal welfare.

The European Forum for Animal Welfare Councils (EuroFAWC) was founded in 2006. EuroFAWC provides a platform for informed debate, for sharing information and views and a network for members of the Animal Welfare Councils throughout Europe (i.e. all countries that belong to the Council of Europe). Several international organisations, such as OIE and the European Commission, have observer status.

The website is: http://eurofawc.com/

by Phil Stewart, Vetscript Editor
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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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Supports the COE, wants to hear opinions from HOD
Source:
July 15, 2010
Accreditation of foreign veterinary schools by the AVMA Council on Education has been in the spotlight ever since this past November when the COE conducted a comprehensive site visit at the National Autonomous University of Mexico School of Veterinary Medicine.

The trip, coinciding with a weak economy and debate over immigration reform, has inadvertently turned the COE's accreditation of foreign veterinary schools into a lightning rod for controversy.

The differences in Association member opinions regarding whether AVMA should continue its role in foreign accreditation were manifest at the AVMA Executive Board meeting June 10-12 in Schaumburg, Ill. Board members held a strategic discussion on the matter and also dealt with two relevant agenda items—a resolution submitted to the AVMA House of Delegates that asks the Association to conduct a benefit-risk analysis of accrediting foreign schools and a recommendation that urged the Association to reaffirm its acceptance of a leadership role in international veterinary medicine.

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