MINISTER REDDY'S GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY FOR FNU’S VETERINARY TEACHING HOSPITAL

Prof. Healy, Vice Chancellor of FNU, Prof Ilji, Dean of the College of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, Members of the Senate of FNU, Academic staff, students, ladies and gentlemen.

Bula vinaka to you all!
Ladies and gentlemen, it is always an honor and pleasure for me to set foot at any University given that this is where knowledge is created and disseminated. This is where our thinking community is…where most of our brightest minds are. They are the critique and conscience of the society…they are supposed to guide the society, guide us, the policy makers and I wish to remind you all today that you have a daunting task of pushing the frontier…if we are to remain competitive in the market, if we are to progress, if we are to remain relevant and not being left behind, then you will play a very critical role. This is why we, government, provide lot of resources to tertiary institutions despite being an emerging economy with its own set of problems and constraints. I have raised this matter as I wanted to jog your memory and remind you of how important you all are to our Fijian society.

Ladies and gentlemen, FNU since its inception in 2010, has come a long way. It has pretty much a full complement of programs and is our national pride. We want it to be our national pride of academic excellence and for that, we will have to do a number of things. This includes, but not limited to:
1. Improvement in infrastructure that will support both teaching and learning and ensure that every student that walks out of the gates of this University has achieved the learning outcomes of the each unit and program and have acquired the attributes that is commensurate of that particular program;
2. We need staff to upgrade their qualifications and for Technical teaching staff to periodically obtain industrial attachment; 
3. You need to boost your research and publication and hold public lectures, panel discussions, symposiums and Conferences on contemporary local and global issues;
4. We need intellectuals in our academic fraternity …the small cadre who will make the policy difference.
I fully understand the challenges of getting to this point and it is not something that can be achieved within a decade or so but the University is being steered in the right direction and I congratulate the Vice Chancellor for his leadership in a very trying circumstances and be rest assured that you have our full support.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to acknowledge the vision of previous VC Dr. Chand and Council for having the will power to establish a veterinary program at FNU. This program is not like a program in the Business College where we just need a classroom, IT lab and library to run the program. It requires specialized lab and very highly specialized teaching staff the least to effectively deliver this programs and ensure that graduates are of high quality. But i can fully understand that this decision to start the program came from the fact that Fiji and the region are facing a major shortage of Veterinarians. Animal welfare is now becoming a critical issue and our countries could not afford to send its students to Universities in Australia and new Zealand …even these countries have limited space plus not all Universities offer this program due to the high cost of delivery.

So again congratulations to FNU for listening to the calls from not only Fiji but also from PICs and starting this program.

Ladies and gentlemen, today we are here to enter into another milestone project, that of constructing a Veterinary Teaching Hospital. A Veterinary Teaching Hospital plays an important role in providing hands on practical experience to veterinarians of tomorrow on how to handle animals and treat them. But it’s not an easy task to establish a teaching hospital as such. It’s easy to construct a building. But we need the right equipment’s and specialists, interns, experts in fields from anesthesia to specialized medicines. We may also require boarded specialists in both large and small animal internal medicine, surgery, cardiology, neurology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology, radiology, emergency and critical care, dermatology, oncology, animal reproduction, and more.

You will have referrals from across Fiji and our own Ministry’s para vets who undertake lot of primary care of animals. We will also require, routine health care, rehabilitation, 24-hour emergency service and intensive care, or for on-farm animal care provided through an ambulatory service.

To attract international students, the hospital will require international accreditation such as by the American Animal Hospital Association, which means it meets more than 900 standards that represent the best practices in veterinary care and hospital management. Standards focus on quality of care in anesthesia, contagious disease, dentistry, pain management, patient care, surgery, and emergency care.
Veterinary students from all six years of the curriculum learn through active engagement in the care for animal patients. They will be exposed to a range of clinical and medical problems on an ongoing basis that is found actually on the field.

This Veterinary hospital will also be of great help to upgrade and provide regular upskilling to our para vets which will be a cost effective way of providing veterinary service to our farmers in the Agriculture Ministry which is spread across throughout the country. Our Animal health and Husbandry extension officers can be upskilled and multitasked to handle basic veterinary works if they go through short internships programs at the Teaching Hospital.
I urge the College to ensure that the Veterinary Teaching Hospital have a core of experts that is readily available for consultation and service to individuals farmers, groups or corporations and government establishments on all aspects of livestock production and assist us in border control biosecurity matters. At the moment, we are actively pursuing the eradication of TB and Brucellosis amongst our beef and dairy cattle. Students can engage with our Ministry and learn a lot. We can work closely with the hospital to share resources.

Very soon, we also expect to see symposiums on contemporary animal welfare and medical issues where experts from outside participate in the discourse which will not only benefit the veterinarians, but also out students.

I call upon development partners to support the Hospital in picking up core budget funding and also for PICs to support the Hospital by sending their students here rather than outside Universities as practical exposure at this Hospital will deal with similar cases in the other small islands states which won’t be found in overseas Universities.

With these words, it’s my pleasure to undertake this ground breaking work to begin construction of the first ever Veterinary teaching Hospital by FNU.