The need for closer collaboration between the medical and veterinary professions

It is increasingly apparent that physicians and veterinarians share the same pool of scientific knowledge and that diseases of animals have many direct and indirect connexions with human health. Nowadays it is realized that, given the opportunity, the veterinarian can make substantial contributions to the medical services by (a) controlling zoonoses, (b) supervising the hygiene of food, especially food of animal origin, (c) assisting in the detection and prevention of environmental pollution, (d) facilitating exchange of research information on analagous problems in man and animals, and (e) ensuring a supply of healthy, standardized laboratory animals. Appropriate administrative machinery at government level is necessary to enable the veterinarian to develop and exercise his potential in this field and to ensure full and effective collaboration between the medical and veterinary professions. Conventional veterinary education provides an excellent background for public health work, but special training is also necessary, at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, for veterinarians who are to assume responsibilities in public health. A fuller partnership between these two health professions, which have so much in common, should be encouraged in various ways, for example by sharing some courses during university education, and by joint meetings to discuss problems of mutual concern.