Introduction
COVID-19 represents an unprecedented emergency and grave societal threat. The effects of COVID-19 on the livestock sector are still largely unquantified and yet to be fully felt. Formal assessments have not yet been possible, but current observations reveal disruptions to livestock value chains (FAO, 2020). Lockdown ignores livestock farmers’ time-sensitive needs, such as artificial insemination, pregnancy checks, vaccinations, de-worming, and more importantly, feed, fodder and water.
To keep the animals alive, healthy, and protected from any infection, we also need to give equal importance to ethno-veterinary practitioners and other veterinary service providers. Like human healthcare staff, they need to be allowed smooth movement, so that they can administer inseminations when the animals are in heat, as well as deliver the other veterinary services that they might require.
Role of Veterinarians in COVID-19 Pandemic
Veterinarians..as a doctors of creatures or lets say the living beings who does not able to speak a word about the problems with their health as like humans. It was the largest pandemic through which world has gone and is suffering. This crisis not only affected the health of the people but also economical condition of the countries in the world. Lockdown has started in the country to prevent the spread of the disease but then also the situation was not almost in control.
As veterinarians has been playing very crucial role in this pandemic by serving for human health sector. Right from human sample testing to research and provision of humans material sources vets done their job very excellently. As far as we think of how this pandemic affected human health the first thing which comes in our mind is ‘One Health’ collaboration. One health plays important role in identification and prevention of diseases viz. COVID-19.
One health means nothing but the interconnection between the health of people ,the health of animal and the environment shared by them. The ‘One Health’ is a collaborative and multi-sectoral approach working not only locally, nationally but also globally whose main is to achieve the optimal health of beings.
Veterinarians are an integral part of global health community. The animals are indirect victims of this pandemic, veterinarians plays important role to safeguard the health and welfare of almost all the animals. In this COVID-19 pandemic, Veterinarians looked after not only the welfare of all animals including companion animals, livestock, laboratory animals and wildlife but also the human health services by making the use of veterinary laboratories for testing of human samples and diagnosing the infectious disease. Veterinary clinics have been donating their personnel protectives equipment and ventilators for the human health services.
Veterinarians has also been voluntarily participating in hospitals and various laboratories where human resources are insufficient to handle the workload. As vets are doing their job very passionately and responsibly in this crisis by providing special biosecurity measures so as to prevent the infection spread in animal population and also surveillance screening for diagnostic testing. The classic example of veterinarians role in COVID-19 crisis is human and animals working side by side as sniffer dogs are trained to detect Covid-19 patients in airports .these dogs are now being used to sniff passengers at airports (e.g. Finland). Various supervise veterinary services provided in vet clinics, different mobile clinics and ambulatory services are running locally and nationally.
Different Dimensions of Veterinary Services during COVID-19
Veterinarians approach apart from human health services is delivering livestock services during covid-19 pandemic is basically animal health services, extension services and livestock management.
In animal health services basically animal should must be well diagnosed, treated, vaccinated periodically this is not just a mere responsibility of veterinarian but also of the owner that their animal should be vaccinated properly on time. In this pandemic crisis, veterinarians playing their role by giving the animal well treatment for diagnosed disease, vaccinating them by going to various villages, towns, cities, farms and polyclinics. These all processes are being carried out normally by taking all precautionary measures. The vaccination of FMD, PPR, LASOTA, MD had done successfully by the veterinarians. The polyclinics are working based on the government guidelines on the health of animals beside the considering the COVID-19 crisis condition.
As a part of veterinary extension services various awareness programmes are held by the online mode viz webinars are arranged through google meet for the farmers and also for the new professionals in this field so as to understand the various aspects of animal health and animal welfare. Different Training programmes have been arranged for the farmers to enhance their knowledge perspective. IVSA Which is International Veterinary Student Association has arranged various one health webinars and zoonotic disease management lectures on online mode which helped all to know about the one health collaborative and multi-sectorial approach These online trainings and webinars helped veterinarians to interact with all veterinary expertise’s, microbiologists and epidemiologists to clear the doubts of the society regarding COVID-19 might transfer through livestock and wild animals.
Further, the online webinars helped all veterinary professionals, private practitioners and research workers to discuss their experiences and solutions and best practices which alleviate the crucial points and lessons learned during this pandemic will improve the vets response towards upcoming pandemics.
Regarding livestock management which includes production management, breeding management, marketing of milk, milk products and animals, feeding management and the clean milk production approach. The veterinarians had handled these issue during pandemic in coherent manner without affecting the productivity and health of animals. The crisis of concentrate feed in terms of unavailability, rising the prices in market during pandemic was addressed through the collaborative approach by the veterinary professionals also imparted necessary skill based training programmes regrading management of feed and fodder for the livestock animals.
Conclusion
The veterinarians are playing very critical role not only in the livestock production sector but also to deliver human health services. The veterinary profession comes as a savior during this pandemic considering different dimensions of services which the veterinary profession possess. Considering the potential of veterinary services which is equally important with human health profession, suitable government interventions are required to tap the potential and channelize it in proper direction which can act as a warrior to fight against this pandemic.
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