Welcome to this blog where you have a chance to interact with your professional colleagues in the area of Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics on various issues of mutual interest. It provides a forum for exhange of views in a variety of topics you wish to tap the opinions of experts in the area. Welcome and enjoy the discourses.
Training in surveillance and epiemiology of trade related tranboundary animal diseases is currently underway at the Kenya School of Government. The training that is jointly organized by the Department of Public Health, Pharmacology,, University of Nairobi and AU-IBAR has drawn participants from six countries of the Greater Horn of Africa including Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti and Southern Sudan. Participants are practising veterinarians in their respective countried who are involved in disease control activities. The purpose of the training is to develop capacity in surveillance and epidemiology for the region to combat transboundary animal diseases especially those that inhibit trade in livestock and livestock products by use of standard methods and procedures developed and promoted by AU-IBAR. My question is whether the current MVEE program in its current state is providing the necessary skills to graduates to help in combating trade- related transboundary animal diseases. In my view, the program lacks a number of components especially the area of trade and its requirement,risk analysis, livestock information systems and emergency response to combat disease outbreaks.the Department has initiated a review of most of the postgraduate curriculae and this is the time to assess deficiencies in the prigrams and suggest appropriate revisions required to make the program responsive to the needs of the region. I wish to request you to give comments on this and suggest areas that require attention in the current MVEE curriculum.
The MVEE program at UoN has indeed been instrumental in training and equipping the next generation of veterinary epidemiologists with skills necessary for effective prevention and control of a range of diseases that incessantly threaten livestock productivity and hence food security in the country. However, to robustly respond to the ever-increasing needs in the livestock sector, particularly in regards to disease control, the program may need to strengthen/incorporate the following areas as part of its curriculum:
1. Qualitative & Quantitative Risk Analysis 2. Veterinary Syndromic Surveillance and Evaluation of Surveillance Systems 3. Participatory Epidemiology 4. Spatial Analysis 5. Infectious Disease Modelling 6. Diagnostic Test Evaluation/Validation 7. General & Generalised Mixed Modelling approaches 8. Approaches to analysis of Clustered Data 9. Survival Analysis 10. Network Analysis
Additionally, Epidemiology lectures should be complemented by practical sessions where students have an opportunity to assimilate lecture material and cultivate “hands-on” skills. As for the Statistics modules, considering the increasing shift by graduate schools to Open-source software, a move to the free R statistical environment is undoubtedly indispensable and should be encouraged.
Apart from enriching the curriculum, the importance of lecturer/student interaction is important, assignments through videos before the next class will go a long way to make the lessons interesting
Welcome to this blog where you have a chance to interact with your professional colleagues in the area of Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics on various issues of mutual interest. It provides a forum for exhange of views in a variety of topics you wish to tap the opinions of experts in the area. Welcome and enjoy the discourses.
ReplyDeleteTraining in surveillance and epiemiology of trade related tranboundary animal diseases is currently underway at the Kenya School of Government. The training that is jointly organized by the Department of Public Health, Pharmacology,, University of Nairobi and AU-IBAR has drawn participants from six countries of the Greater Horn of Africa including Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti and Southern Sudan. Participants are practising veterinarians in their respective countried who are involved in disease control activities. The purpose of the training is to develop capacity in surveillance and epidemiology for the region to combat transboundary animal diseases especially those that inhibit trade in livestock and livestock products by use of standard methods and procedures developed and promoted by AU-IBAR. My question is whether the current MVEE program in its current state is providing the necessary skills to graduates to help in combating trade- related transboundary animal diseases. In my view, the program lacks a number of components especially the area of trade and its requirement,risk analysis, livestock information systems and emergency response to combat disease outbreaks.the Department has initiated a review of most of the postgraduate curriculae and this is the time to assess deficiencies in the prigrams and suggest appropriate revisions required to make the program responsive to the needs of the region. I wish to request you to give comments on this and suggest areas that require attention in the current MVEE curriculum.
ReplyDeleteThe MVEE program at UoN has indeed been instrumental in training and equipping the next generation of veterinary epidemiologists with skills necessary for effective prevention and control of a range of diseases that incessantly threaten livestock productivity and hence food security in the country. However, to robustly respond to the ever-increasing needs in the livestock sector, particularly in regards to disease control, the program may need to strengthen/incorporate the following areas as part of its curriculum:
ReplyDelete1. Qualitative & Quantitative Risk Analysis
2. Veterinary Syndromic Surveillance and Evaluation of Surveillance Systems
3. Participatory Epidemiology
4. Spatial Analysis
5. Infectious Disease Modelling
6. Diagnostic Test Evaluation/Validation
7. General & Generalised Mixed Modelling approaches
8. Approaches to analysis of Clustered Data
9. Survival Analysis
10. Network Analysis
Additionally, Epidemiology lectures should be complemented by practical sessions where students have an opportunity to assimilate lecture material and cultivate “hands-on” skills. As for the Statistics modules, considering the increasing shift by graduate schools to Open-source software, a move to the free R statistical environment is undoubtedly indispensable and should be encouraged.
Thanks doc for your valuable input. We will surely consider your suggestions to enrich the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteApart from enriching the curriculum, the importance of lecturer/student interaction is important, assignments through videos before the next class will go a long way to make the lessons interesting
ReplyDeleteThank you for the post.
ReplyDeletehttps://finance.uonbi.ac.ke/uon_news