Registration is open for the 2020 AAVMC Annual conference at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The theme for this year’s conference is “Catalyze 2020: Innovate and Inspire.” The AAVMC’s annual conference is considered one of the leading professional development events in international academic veterinary medicine. Hundreds of educators and other leaders from the veterinary medical profession are expected to gather for the three-day forum. For registration information, please click here.

The International Veterinary Simulation in Teaching advisory board and the local organizing committee invite you to attend InVeST 2020 held at St. George’s University, located in Grenada, West Indies from May 1 – May 3, 2020.

The theme this year is “Taking technology and educational simulation into the next decennium.” With our theme, we aim to explore a range of questions:

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The second biennial Australasian Veterinary Educators Symposium ‘Vet Ed Down Under’ will be hosted by The University of Queensland, School of Veterinary Science, Gatton Campus from 11-13 February 2020. The inaugural symposium was hosted by the University of Adelaide, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences in February 2018.

Modeled on the very successful Vet Ed Symposium in the UK/ Europe, the aim of the symposium is to promote veterinary education in the Australia and New Zealand region through sharing of innovations, ideas and best practise in teaching and learning with an emphasis on networking and community building. The symposium will be inclusive and affordable thereby providing an opportunity for delegates from all levels of teaching and learning to attend. Please click here for the remainder of the story.

Veterinary education has been changing with the times to remain relevant to the needs of the society. However, the craft of veterinary education over the last decade or so has changed immeasurably. Some of the changes which are thought to be making profound impact on veterinary educational environments include: outcome-based curriculum and assessment, shifting from instructor centred teaching to student centred learning, educational quality control through national and regional accreditation, finding balance among scientific knowledge, technical skills and professional skills in the curriculum and how to teach technical skills and communication skills, etc. All those changes, practices and innovations have been contributing to build veterinary education as a discipline in its own right. Please click here for the reminder of the story.

The first students in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, were enrolled in 1920. The Faculty was started by Arnold Theiler at the Onderstepoort research facility, which was by then established for 12 years and already making significant contributions to the local livestock industry. A second veterinary school in South Africa, the Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA) Faculty of Veterinary Science was established in 1980 and operated until amalgamation with the University of Pretoria school in 1999.

The first class of 8 veterinarians graduated in 1924. For 25 years the number of graduates remained low until 1948 when 21 veterinarians graduated. Over the decades the number of veterinarians graduating in South Africa increased, with a record number of 170 in 2019.

The Faculty was also one of the pioneers in establishing veterinary nursing as a profession with the 2-year diploma in veterinary nursing starting in 1977. This was replaced by the 3-year BVetNurs in 2019, which finally provides veterinary nursing graduates in South Africa access to post graduate education. Please click here for the reminder of the story.

The third annual Conference of Continuing Education for the Veterinarians and Animal Husbandry Graduates of Bangladesh (CEVET) was held on 16-18 November 2019 in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, hosting 500 veterinarians and animal husbandry professionals working for the public and private sectors, including government, non-government organizations, poultry and dairy sectors, academia, and research institutes, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, from all over Bangladesh. The veterinary profession in Bangladesh is passing through a phase of dramatic change in its size, diversity and societal needs. The remarkable growth of the poultry industry, emergence of the commercial dairy farming and unprecedented increase in the number of companion animals has thrown new challenges to the veterinarians and animal husbandry professionals. Prevention and control of well entrenched highly pathogenic and low pathogenic avian influenza in poultry, combating antimicrobial resistance, developing community-based dairy production and marketing system, ensuring the quality and safety of milk and other products of animal origin are the major issues to be addressed by the veterinarians and animal husbandry professionals of Bangladesh. Please click here for the reminder of the story.

Humans and animals in Bangladesh are very often infected with the emergence and re-emergence of bacterial and viral zoonotic (avian influenza, rabies, nipah virus infection, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, rota virus infection, anthrax, tuberculosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis and Leptospirosis) as well as food and water borne diseases. Transboundary animal diseases like high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), foot and mouth disease (FMD), pestes des petits (PPR), lumpy skin diseases (LSD) etc are major health threats to the livestock of Bangladesh. Veterinary medical professionals working at different government and non-government organizations in Bangladesh play a major role for controlling these diseases. There are 11 veterinary schools in Bangladesh offering Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and B.Sc. (Vet. Sci. & A.H.) degrees for nearly one thousand veterinary undergraduate students annually. In order to produce skilled veterinarians with problem solving abilities there is an urgent need to train veterinary teaching staffs working at various veterinary educational institutes in Bangladesh. Please click here for the reminder of the story.

Veterinary educators strive to prepare graduates for a variety of career options with the skills and knowledge to utilize, and contribute to, research as part of their lifelong practice of evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM). In the veterinary curriculum, students should receive a grounding in research and EBVM, as well as have the opportunity to consider research as a career. The lack of a cohesive body of information that identified the options and the challenges inherent to embedding such training in veterinary curricula led to the formation of an international group with the goal to synthesize evidence to help curriculum designers, course leaders and teachers implement educational approaches that will help inspire future researchers and create evidence-based practitioners. A literature review around the rationale, issues and options for research and EBVM in the curriculum was performed. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 11 key stakeholders across the eight Council for International Veterinary Medical Education (CIVME) regions. Emergent themes from the literature and interviews included societal need, career development and skills important for clinical professional life as reasons for including research and EBVM skills into the curriculum. Approaches included compulsory as well as optional learning opportunities. Barriers to incorporating these skills into the curriculum were grouped into student and faculty/staff related issues, including time in the curriculum and financial barriers. Having motivated faculty and contextualizing the teaching were considered important to engage students. The information has been summarized in an online ‘toolbox’ and is freely available for educators to inform curriculum development.

Global security is a dependent trait, which largely depends on the health security of humans. The vitality of the global economy largely depends on the collective health of human, animal and plants, including the overall ecosystems. The capacities of health systems of a nation are critical for ensuring the health security of a nation as well as the world as exemplified by the outbreaks of Ebola in capacity compromised African nations. Weak health security capacities in any part of the world may threaten the global health system. The health systems encompass the entire range of sectors and disciplines engaged in human, animal and ecosystems interface, not merely the public health sector in the narrowest sense. Investment for human and physical capacity building remains far from adequate and staggeringly low in the developing world, with scant investment in animal and wildlife health. Despite pledges from the international community and national governments, the actual action in the field is heavily constrained by poor funding and inefficient utilization. A strong political will and commitment from the professional communities to work coherently are two important cornerstones for improving capacities for health security. The 10th One Health Conference of Bangladesh was convened on 26-28 November in Dhaka to discuss and garner strong political commitment for incremental investment for health security capacity building and pledges from the professional community to substantially improve the utilization efficiency for making the world safer. Please click here for the reminder of the story.

The second edition of the National Veterinary Days was held on June 13 and 14, 2019 at Nangui Abrogoua University in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. This event organized by the Association of Veterinary Doctors of Ivory Coast (ADVCI) in partnership with the University Nangui Abrogoua was sponsored by Mr. Kobenan Kouassi Adjoumani, Minister of Animal and Fisheries Resources of the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire and presided over by Dr. Adama Coulibaly, Veterinarian, Director General of the Cotton and Cashew Council. These days focused on "the role of the veterinarian in the value chains of animal and fish resources and in the quality of agro-food industries."

This theme is justified due to the fact that in spite of continued economic growth of 5% per annum, Africa needs to accelerate its economic development to meet the growing demand for food, water and energy to ward off rapid population growth, rapid urbanization and climate change. Please click here for the reminder of the story.

CIVME members were hosted in Brisbane, Australia from 1 to 2 November 2019 for its annual regional meeting outside of the USA. The programme included a visit to the Gatton campus of the Queensland University veterinary school. The meeting included a number of agenda points, amongst others, a revision of the goals of CIVME; consensus was reached about the following four main goals:

The Council on International Veterinary Medical Education (CIVME) is an international group of veterinary educators affiliated with the American Association for Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). CIVME’s goal is to promote collaboration, foster innovation and share best practices on a worldwide scale to advance the quality of teaching and learning in veterinary medical education. The Council meets in person twice annually with several electronic meetings in between. Current functions of the Council include to strengthen an international group dedicated to improving veterinary medical education, to create and maintain an international Community of Practice for veterinary educators, to foster and highlight educational research by administering a microgrants programme and to provide support for accreditation.

CIVME is awaiting applications for nomination from dynamic veterinary educator volunteers to fill vacancies in the following regions:

Applications should reach the regional representatives by 31 January 2020.

Over recent decades veterinary education has emerged as a discipline in its own right. A symposium, ‘VetEd’, was initiated by a small group of veterinary educators from several UK universities who had regularly attended the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) and were keen to explore the opportunities for a veterinary equivalent. The intention was to follow Wenger’s principles of a ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP) where VetEd would enable a group with a common interest (in this case veterinary education) to grow and evolve over time while sharing and developing new knowledge.

The aims of VetEd were to provide an open and friendly atmosphere for those interested in veterinary education to share ideas, innovations, research and best practice. The VetEd CoP would engage with educators in the broadest sense; for example, including academics, clinicians, technical support staff, students and practitioners. The annual symposium was to be hosted on a rotating basis at a veterinary school to draw in local participants and be affordable. VetEd celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2019. It became the official conference of the newly formed Veterinary Schools Council (VSC) in 2016. The first VetEd Down Under was held in 2018 and the first VetEd Asia is planned for 2020. Please click here for remainder of story.

MSD Animal Health is teaming up with the AAVMC on an international grant program designed to help mitigate the global public health problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Administered through the AAVMC’s Council on International Veterinary Medical Education (CIVME), the new MSD Animal Health CIVME Antimicrobial Stewardship Grant program seeks to improve instructional programs related to AMR in educational institutions around the world. “Successfully mitigating the antimicrobial resistance problem is going to require the coordinated efforts of many institutions in both the public and private sectors working together at the global level,” said AAVMC CEO Dr. Andrew T. Maccabe. “Training students and professionals about responsible therapeutic practices is an important strategy for success, and we’re pleased to have this opportunity to collaborate with Merck Animal Health on a promising initiative.” Please click here for remainder of story.