Capacity building of diagnostic services for Zooneses. Colorado University, UNITD

Veterinary public health (VPH) was originally defined in a 1975 Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee Report as "the component of public health activities devoted to the application of professional veterinary skills, knowledge, and resources to the protection and improvement of human health." A more recent WHO study group report in 1999 expanded this definition to include "the sum of all contributions to the physical, mental, and social well-being of humans through an understanding and application of veterinary science". This latter report emphasized that VPH would have to develop against a rapidly changing background of population growth, increasing urbanization, an increasing poverty and technology gap between developed and developing countries as well as changes in land use, the environment, and climate.

Capacity building is a process whereby individuals, groups, institutions, organizations and societies enhance their abilities to identify and meet development challenges in a sustainable manner. FAO proactively supports global capacity building activities and the Animal Health Service works closely with stakeholders in Member Nations and the international community in the area of surveillance, prevention and control of zoonotic diseases in support of agricultural development, food safety and food security.

The majority of developed countries have surveillance systems in place to detect and control major zoonotic diseases at national and subnational levels. In developing countries and those countries in transition whose infrastructures require rebuilding, general VPH services and surveillance systems and control programmes are likely to be deficient at all levels.

Many publications, surveys, and conclusions from a recent 2001 FAO/WHO/OIE-sponsored electronic conference on VPH and the control of zoonoses in developing countries have identified numerous difficulties relating to the effective delivery of prevention and control programmes.

These include:

• lack of any organized surveillance programme;

• focus on task-oriented VPH programmes unrelated to risk-based priorities;

• poorly defined epidemiological knowledge of local VPH problems;

• minimal communication and cooperation between providers of human and veterinary health services;

• lack of VPH educational materials and programmes for extension;

• difficulties in electronic access to science-based current VPH information sources;

• lack of suitably trained individuals at all levels; and

• lack of VPH infrastructures.