Introduction to VPH
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What is Veterinary Public Health?
The field of Public Health concerns the management of human health at the community level. This contrasts to other aspects of medicine where treatment is frequently focussed on the individual. Public Health often involves methods of disease prevention (e.g. vaccination, sanitation, etc.).
Veterinary Public Health concerns all areas of Public Health that can be protected or improved by Veterinary Medicine. See WHO-VPH
Under this broad definition Veterinary Public Health could include almost all aspects of veterinary work from treating pets (as this helps people's "..mental & social well-being..") to farm animal veterinary work (as this helps secure food production, essential to public health).
Conventionally Veterinary Public Health as a topic covers the following areas:
Food production & safety
It is desirable to consider food production as a chain, with animals on the farm (pre-harvest) then going for primary processing (harvest), secondary processing & distribution followed by final preparation (all post-harvest). This "Farm to Fork" concept can be easily described by considering a beef animal on a farm going to slaughter at the abattoir, then the hamburger production plant, then being distributed to a supermarket. The hamburger is then sold, taken home, stored, cooked & eaten.
Veterinary Public Health concerns all aspects of food production chain from controlling epidemic diseases that may impact on agriculture, to ensuring slaughter is conducted safely & humanely, to informing the public on safe ways to store & cook hamburgers.
The safe production of meat is covered in Food Safety
Zoonosis control
A zoonosis may be defined as any disease and/or infection which is naturally transmissible between animals & man. See WHO-Zoonoses
They are of major public concern. Headlines on issues like Avian Influenza, BSE (mad cow disease) & Salmonella of eggs have dominated the UK newspaper headlines for the last thirty years.
The picture in developed & developing countries may be quite different as far as zoonoses are concerned. In developed countries the consumer has very little contact with the live animal, limiting transmission from live animals to the general public. In addition food safety is extremely regulated. Despite this food borne disease is still a big problem in developed countries. In the EU in 2006, a total of 175,561 confirmed cases of campylobacteriosis were reported from 21 MS and reported cases will only represent the tip of the iceberg (see - The EFSA Journal (2007) 130-Main conclusions on the Community Summary Report on Zoonoses 2006).