The Fiji Veterinary Association (FVA) is looking at establishing a veterinary school in the country to tackle the overall shortage of veterinarians in Fiji and in other Pacific island countries.
The shortage of veterinarians locally is an issue being discussed at length at the 15th Commonwealth Veterinary Association Regional Conference underway in Nadi.
Currently, only the French territories in the Pacific Island Countries Territories (PICTS) have ample veterinarians looking at the needs of the livestock sector and animal welfare.
FVA president, Dr Robin Yarrow said the long term answer to our need for veterinarians is to train them locally.
While Dr Yarrow said having a vet school here would be a very big undertaking in need investment, the benefits it would have for Fiji and the neighboring island nations would undoubtedly be immense.
Reiterating the comments made by His Excellency the President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau (at the opening of the conference this week) that “producing our own veterinarians will also be a better way of using the resources required”, Dr Yarrow said locally trained vets would be much more familiar with Fiji’s conditions.
“The school will also benefit from partnerships from other vet schools, for instance, the veterinary school in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and the James Cook University in Queensland. They are both tropical schools and they are interested in helping because they are both here at the conference,” Dr Yarrow said.
“We can look at innovative partnerships and ways in which we can upgrade and expand our present Animal Health Diploma program at the Fiji National University to build that into a program for veterinary science. We believe it’s feasible and it’s possible.”
Dr Yarrow said that Fiji has been training doctors for over 120 years here at the Fiji School of Medicine not just for Fiji but for the region and a similar arrangement could be looked into for training veterinarians at home.
“If we do it for veterinarians, because they would be trained here in this region, they would be much more familiar with our conditions and they’d be much more likely to stay. In the process, we’d also be providing training for our neighbouring countries like Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.
“None of those can really have their own vet school. It’s just too big a commitment and it’s too costly and they do not have the numbers. This is why a regional school makes a lot of sense,” Dr Yarrow added.
The CVA conference has also provided the FVA with a good opportunity to talk to several partners present here.
“It also lets us share that concept with other people here and some of them will get quite interested and we can get a process going whereby we can have a sort of a feasibility study done as to how big should the facility be, what are the main elements of it, what are the potential partnerships, what is the output and demand,” Dr Yarrow said.
Dr Yarrow believes that the planning and feasibility study could take a couple of years.
“New approaches such as partnerships with overseas veterinary schools are now increasingly “the way to go”, thereby building on their experience and knowledge.”
The faculty of veterinary science of the University Putra in Malaysia, participating in the CVA conference, is an example of such an institution in another developing tropical country.
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