[Tropical veterinary medicine and education in The Netherlands]

in this lecture an overview is given of the development of tropical veterinary medicine and education in The Netherlands after the Dutch colonial period. The starting point is the development of tropical veterinary medicine in general, especially in Europe and Africa. It is pointed out that just now it is very important to have specialists in tropical diseases not only in the tropics but also in the western world since globalization involves the import of a lot of tropical diseases. The speaker is an advocate of a course on tropical veterinary medicine on an European level, but at the same time he is sceptical about it. In the second part he gives an overview of the education programme on tropical veterinary medicine from the foundation of the Institute at Utrecht University in 1948 until its decline.