12May/16

SASVEPM 2012 Pre-congress

CE

SASVEPM 2012 Pre-congress Workshop Databases for Veterinarians

The annual congress of the Southern African Society of veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine was held in Pretoria between the 1st and 3rd of August 2012. There was however a pre-congress workshop on the 29th and 30th of July which was organised by Dr John Grewar (assisted by Dr Lesley van Helden) on behalf of SASVEPM.

Training was given to 11 attendees and the course was practically designed to teach database design with specific reference to veterinary officials. We made use of an actual outbreak dataset and evaluated the challenges and management of the data thereof. The delegates attending the workshop came predominately from the State and we had representation from DAFF, KZN, Free State, Eastern Cape, North West Province and Gauteng.

The course was intensive and attendees were taken were taken from learning the basics of designing a database for investigating a animal disease outbreak all the way to linking the data up with ArcGIS to spatially show the data in various ways.

sasvepm2012_Precon1

Back from left: Dr Peter Geertsma, Mr Siyabonga Nguye, Mr Willie van Zyl, Dr John Grewar (co-ordinator), Dr Duma Mpofu, Dr Nhamo Nyanhongo, Dr Lesley van Helden

Front from left: Dr Lerato Kgatswetswe, Dr Johan Blignaut, Dr Vuyo Magadla, Dr Sunelle Strydom, Dr Sabine Kroll-Lwanga Iga

Insert: Dr Shashi Ramrajh

12May/16

World Veterinary Congress 2011 – Epidemiology Stream

Congress

The World Veterinary Congress turned out to be a most informative and enjoyable event. The epidemiology stream was varied with topics ranging from sero-prevalence surveys in South America to some interesting rabies data from Gauteng and KZN. The guest speaker, Dr Angus Cameron, from AusVet services was inspirational and his talks were often fully attended in the venue. The final workshop he held on various surveillance problems was particularly informative and showed that surveillance techniques don’t always fit into a mould; every scenario requires application of various surveillance methods.

12May/16

CE Course 2011

CE

SASVEPM successfully hosted a CE course in May in Pretoria which was presented by Prof. Geoff Fosgate and Prof. Peter Thompson of the University of Pretoria, Faculty of Veterinary Science, entitled Disease Outbreak Investigation. It was a computer based course held over four days. Much hands-on experience on data cleaning, scenario analysis and statistical manipulation was presented. The various steps in a classical outbreak investigation in a outbreak of unknown aetiology were thoroughly work-shopped. Groups did a report back on their findings from a dataset supplied, with possible scenarios and interventions.Twenty one veterinarians and animal health technicians from all over South Africa attended. Feedback was very positive with comments like; “an excellent initiative and very relevant’; “very informative’; “enjoyable”; and “the interaction was superb”.SASVEPM hopes to be able to present this course on a regular basis and even to extend the content to a second phase. Information in this regard will be sent to members.

sasvepm2011CE_group

12May/16

SASVEPM Congress 2010

Congress

The theme for the 2010 SASVEPM Congress was

“ANIMAL AND MAN: EXPLORING THE EXPANDING INTERFACE”,

which focussed on zoonoses and supporting the principle of “One World, One Health”.

Click here to download the 2010 Congress Proceedings

We were honoured to have an internationally acclaimed plenary speaker for the 2010 SASVEPM Congress in the person of Dr. Gideon Brückner. After a distinguished career in the South African Veterinary Services, Dr Brückner joined the OIE Central Bureau as Head of the Scientific and Technical Department at the beginning of 2006. In October 2007 he was promoted to Deputy Director General, Animal Health and International Trade. This achievement is a first for South Africa. Amongst others, he was instrumental in promoting OFFLU, the OIE/FAO network of expertise for avian influenza and the OIE initiative on laboratory twinning to enable access to scientific expertise for developing countries. He retired from the OIE at the end of March 2009 and returned to his home country, South Africa. During his time at the OIE in Paris, he managed to facilitate and initiate several aspects to the advantage of Africa and southern Africa. He was instrumental and the key driver to obtain OIE Reference Laboratory status for the Onderstepoort Institute for Epizootic diseases as well as the nomination and acceptance of the Faculty of Veterinary Science as an OIE Collaborating Centre for Training in integrated livestock and wildlife health and management. In May 2009, he was proposed by Africa and elected unanimously by the OIE International Assembly consisting of 174 countries, as President of the OIE Scientific Commission for Animal Diseases. In this capacity he will be able to further promote and serve the interests of the African continent.

Dr. Lucille Blumberg MBBCH, MMed (Micro) FFTM (Glasgow) DTMH DOH DCH was the continued education presenter for this congress. She is a deputy director at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in the National Health Laboratory Service in Johannesburg, South Africa and a lecturer and Professor at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch respectively. She is head of the Epidemiology division which includes the surveillance, travel medicine and outbreak units at the NICD and is the medical consultant to the Special Pathogens Unit. Dr Blumberg qualified at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1974, worked in clinical medicine in paediatrics, critical care and infectious diseases before qualifying as a specialist microbiologist. She worked at the Sizwe Tropical and TB Hospital in Johannesburg from 1988-1991. Her special interests are tropical medicine, travel- related diseases, zoonotic diseases, severe malaria, drug- resistant tuberculosis, rabies and viral haemorrhagic fevers. She is a member of the National Malaria Advisory Group, the National Rabies Advisory Group and the National Outbreak Response Team.

We believe the congress was a success and we trust that the delegates will take valuable knowledge with them and make use of it in their daily work