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.
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