Greetings from the Jamaica Veterinary Medical Association on this World Veterinary Day. The 2013 theme is ‘Vaccination’.

Emphasis is being placed in this message on encouraging persons to have their pets, horses and food producing animals vaccinated with the appropriate vaccines, applied by persons trained and licensed to do so.

Consult a veterinarian to find out what vaccines your animals need to remain healthy and how often they need to be given. Some disease causing agents can infect humans (zoonoses), and treating diseases when they occur ends up more costly than vaccinating to prevent them.

Eliminating recommended vaccination programs contributes to the increased need for importation when diseases cause lower livestock production from poor livestock growth and/or dead animals.

In closing, let me express my gratitude to our sponsors and clients for supporting World Veterinary Day.

In recent years health threats at the human–animal–ecosystem interface have increased, as pathogens continue to evolve and adapt to new hosts and environments, imposing a burden on human and animal health systems. This increase in health threats is driven by a multiplicity of inter-related global factors generally related to human actions and environmental changes reflecting the complexities of the ecosystems in which humans and animals must coexist. It should be noted that 60% of human infectious diseases, 75% of emerging diseases and 80% of pathogens that could potentially be used in bioterrorism have their source in animals.

World Veterinary Day 2013 highlights the importance of vaccination in the fight to protect both humans and animals from devastating diseases and also the eradication of diseases. For example, on June 28, 2011 the United Nations officially declared that for the second time in history, a disease had been wiped off the face of the earth. This disease, Rinderpest, or cattle-plague, an infectious viral disease of cattle, buffalo, yak and numerous wildlife species caused devastating effects throughout history. In the 1890's rinderpest destroyed nearly 90 percent of all cattle in sub-Saharan Africa and millions of wild animals. On October 26, 1977 Small Pox became the first disease to be so eradicated.

I wish to commend the members of the Jamaica Veterinary Medical Association (JVMA), the staff of the Veterinary Services Division, our veterinarians, animal health technicians and laboratory experts for their hard work over the years in keeping Jamaica free of devastating diseases.