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Our Project Goal

To provide evidence to enhance the prominence of Veterinary Public Health within academia, governments and communities in South and Southeast Asia. To create enthusiasm and sustainable support for regional Veterinary Public Health research and action.

Project Background

Three-quarters of all recent emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) have arisen from animals, many in tropical areas. The global public health community now recognizes that the control of disease in animals is the principle way to reduce human exposure and prevent EIDs. Veterinary Public Health (VPH) is the branch of biomedical science best suited to do this. Unfortunately, VPH capacities are rudimentary in many Low and Middle Income countries even showing a marked decline in recent decades.

The health of people, especially in poor tropical countries, cannot be disaggregated from animal health. Promoting animal health through VPH will improve agricultural production and human health benefits, while providing the public "side-effect" of EID control. Unfortunately, significant deficits in VPH research and capacity prevent us from seizing the opportunities to safeguard human health by managing our relationship with the animal world, thus maintaining global vulnerability to EIDs.

This project will make an international contribution by applying a variety of methods to make evidence-based recommendations on how to construct a VPH system. We will do this by developing the components of a Veterinary Public Health System in Sri Lanka and then extend this knowledge through a regional network.

The Project will focus on fiive main areas:

• Networking regional and national players.
• Identifying targets for leaderships and removing obstacles to training and retaining VPH leaders.
• Creating a model for governance of VPH programs to control EIDs.
• Developing new methods to engage local citizens in the detection and prevention of EIDs.
• Synthesizing all results to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of a locally based, multi-disciplinary approach to preventing EIDs via VPH.

 

Project Grant

Teasdale-Corti Global Health Research Partnership Program fostering:

"international partnerships and collaboration in support of research and action, and grounding the work where it is most needed – among those most affected by global health challenges"