[Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Waterways Fiji/Facebook]

The emergence of trans-boundary diseases in the Pacific such as African Swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease means it is critical to strengthen our animal health capacity to ensure effective surveillance and early warning of possible incursions.

This was said by Acting Permanent Secretary for Agriculture Doctor Vinesh Kumar during the opening of the Para-Veterinarian Training for over 30 livestock officers from around the country in Suva yesterday.

Kumar says the course is timely due to the chronic shortages of veterinarians in Fiji and the load of day-to-day animal health related field work falls on the shoulders of para-veterinarians.

“It gives us the quality assurance when it comes to providing veterinary services to some level. We not saying that they are replacing the veterinarians but we’re providing the leverage in service delivery as well as providing quality assurance that whoever is providing that service to you in the field has got some level of qualification and confidence when they are looking after you.”

Kumar says having qualified animal health protection staff is essential to safeguarding livestock, which plays an important role in the livelihoods and cultures of all Fijians.

The para-veterinary training is a distance learning program implemented by the Agriculture Ministry and Pacific Community (SPC) and co-funded by the European Union in the Pacific through the SAFE Pacific project.