Public Health Medicine meets Veterinary Medicine

By Dr Sikhumbuzo A Mabunda

I am sure my fans must have been wondering if I am still alive, well rest assured I have survived. After the “eye opening” day yesterday with Home Based Care Workers and the reptile park we went on to learn more about the interaction between Humans - Domestic animals - Wild animals. This unfortunately came at a prize, a huge prize! We had to be on the road from 04:30 am, just to go see cows being dipped! i Yho yho yho!

Dr Greg Simpson (the Veterinary doctor) had 5 veterinary students with him, 3 final years from the University of Pretoria (Onderstepoort) and 2 were third year students from the Netherlands. As much as we don’t often think about it, there are lots of diseases transmitted between humans and animals (whether wild or domestic), these are therefore grounds for Public Health Medicine to partner up with veterinary medicine using a public health approach in addressing ill health arising from this interaction.

Just like Human Health promoters, the veterinaries also address farmers to educate and prevent ill health either to the animals or to humans. We then experienced the cattle being inspected, calves being tattoed, wounds cleaned, blood drawn from both the neck and tail of a cow and Fidele even auscaltated a cow.

We then moved to the Hluvukani clinic to show the veterinary students the setup of a Primary Care Health Centre and the possible challenges experienced.

After this we then went to the Hluvukani Animal Health Clinic to meet Lucy (the 3 legged calf with “failure to thrive”/ also abandoned). We had a tour of their operating theatres and pharmaceutical area. We had a lecture from Dr Greg to contextualise the importance of these two professions working together in the promotion of wellbeing.

Quality Assurance (QA)

 At 11:30am when we got to Tintswalo hospital for the QA talk we were already into our 8^th hour of our working day. We were impressed with how well this man (Mr Peter Ngobeni) understands the health system and the challenges the hospital faces. He also knows the weaknesses and strengths of the methodologies used to measure the Domains and Priority areas from the National Core Standards (NCS).

It was so emotional for all of us to say our goodbye to Thembi our hostess and the Wits Rural Health organiser. She has really excelled and was very accommodating and understanding.

We met the cattle herders and farmers at 6:00 in deep rural Mpumalanga.
It was amazing to see everyone so early and so organized so far off the beaten track.

Greg Simpson meeting with the farmers

Veterinary students first catching and then weighing and tagging the calfs - something like a mini rodeo

University of Pretoria Veterinary School:
http://web.up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=50

Tintswalo hospital:
http://www.tintswalohospital.org/