Within a period of less than a year, COVID-19 related restrictions overhauled a big chunk of the global workforce rendering millions jobless. For many businesses and other services, the unprecedented lockdown measures forced many to close or to shut down permanently. To date, businesses are still reeling from the effects of the pandemic. A few have recovered but many more went under with some showing no prospects of ever recovering.
While all these happened, veterinary services provision remained largely untouched. While the nature and manner of provision of these services changed, veterinary services themselves remained available and continued to be provided, with veterinarians themselves protected under the designation of their services as “essential”.
Even before veterinary medicine was designated as such, the nature of the profession has always been that it is vital. Knowledge of veterinary medicine is essential in animal health, production and welfare. Aspects of health, production and welfare are extensive and vary depending on whether the animal in question is a food animal, companion animal or wildlife- but all draw from a basic blueprint from which veterinary medicine is practiced.
This blueprint is the depth of understanding of animal health, welfare and disease in relation to the environment on one hand, disease causing agents on the other and the individual animal or group of animals on yet another. This interconnectivity forms the basis for disease diagnosis, health interventions, animal health plans, policies and regulations extending from an individual animal, a farm, sub county, district, onwards and upwards to the largest global administrative unit. This is the blueprint that guides such interventions as animal vaccinations, mass treatments, and animal quarantines.
Veterinarians thus form an extensive workforce spanning across such a multitude of fields as private or corporate clinical practice, research, academia, wildlife conservation, public health, food safety, pharmaceuticals, governance, policy and regulation; and development. Because of the disproportionately small number of veterinarians relative to the demand for animal health services, a career in veterinary medicine guarantees a continued flow of work whether one seeks to be employed formally or to engage in private clinical, extension or consultative practice.
In Uganda, the government is the biggest employer of veterinarians. Veterinarians may be employed as animal extension workers, animal and animal product inspectors, wildlife veterinarians for game parks, and as administrators in several positions within central and local governance structures. Other employers include Non-governmental organizations engaged in wildlife conservation and in development activities, specifically livestock-related livelihood activities; Pharmaceutical companies, Private and corporate veterinary practices (clinics and hospitals), and in Private farms. The police and military also have special interest in recruiting veterinarians. The police canine unit for example needs the services of a veterinarian and an in-house one is an excellent bet.
Some veterinarians go completely off-tangent into other careers like media and entertainment. A couple have also moved into human- medicine related fields.
The future of veterinary medicine and Veterinary practice is increasingly hingeing on the global agenda of food security and poverty eradication, climate change and green energy, and control of new, emerging and re-emerging zoonotic (diseases tranmissible between humans and animals) and non-zoonotic animal diseases. The concept of OneHealth has also arisen to develop inter-disciplinary approaches to handling human and animal diseases and conditions., with potential to incorporate aspects of mental health.
The veterinary profession is thus a diverse and versatile one offering a near-boundless limit of options, worthy of considering. In the end, veterinary medicine is not just about animals, but also a healthy ecosystem in which both animals, humans and the environment thrive.
Kind regards,
Anna Grace
