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Chittagong
Veterinary &
Animal Sciences
University
Bangladesh

Lecture-1: Introduction to Preventive

Veterinary Medicine

Dept of Medicine and Surgery

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
 • Course title : Preventive Veterinary Medicine
• Course code : PVM-401
• Course credits : 2+0
• Total marks : 100+0

Theory:
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Class attendance : 10
1st mid-term examination : 10
2nd mid-term examination : 10
Final examination : 70
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Total marks : 100

 Preventive medicine
• Preventive not “preventative” medicine and
there are no “preventative drugs” to give to
animals so they won’t get sick.

• What is “preventive medicine”?

– Objective of clinical medicine = “cure the sick”

– Objective of preventive medicine “solve the problem”

Preventive medicine is the branch of medical study and practice

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aimed at preventing disease and promoting health and production

 Overall learning objectives
• Understand how to
– Prevent, control and eradicate endemic, emerging and
reemerging infectious as well as zoonotic animal
diseases in population
– Prevent and control of non-infectious economically
important livestock diseases

• Understand the objectives of

– FAO/OIE/WTO mandate to regulate livestock business
– National government policy to eliminate the infectious
diseases
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• Understand how to
– Set, run and importance of animal herd and poultry
flock health programmes
 Roles of veterinarians in public health
• The veterinarian’s role in human health is in
preventive medicine for people (advisory and
management aid to have maximum beneficial effect
total farm production)

• We prevent animal diseases from affecting people

• We prevent diseases associated with animal usage

from affecting people
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 The Role of Infectious Disease and
Preventive Medicine in our Society
Three main points:
1. The history of mankind has been dominated by epidemic
disease - not great armies.
2. Preventive medicine has freed us from the devastation of
epidemic disease.
3. Veterinarians should be proud of our historic
contributions in preventive medicine and should expand
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our involvement on the human preventive medicine

team.
 Preventive medicine approach
• Epidemic disease is largely controlled through
preventive medicine by:
– Sanitation (food hygiene, pest control, etc.)
– Hand washing - one of most important means of
preventing infection
– Good nutrition
– Disease control measures (education, isolation,
vaccination, eradication, control of disease in
animals, etc.)
• Diarrhoea
– Oral saline (ICDDR,B)
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• Major improvements were made before the

advent of antibiotics or curative medicine
 Some terminology

Prevention
• The action of stopping something from
happening or arising

Preventive
• Preventive is defined as a medicine or
treatment designed to prevent disease or
something from happening
– A vaccine to prevent you from getting the flu is an
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example of a preventive
 Control
• Disease control is a term used to describe all measures
used to reduce the frequency of illness already present
in the population to what is considered an acceptable
level

• The level of disease that is considered acceptable may

be determined by fewer production losses or lower
morbidity and mortality rates

• Usually a control programme is undertaken before

eradication programmes because it is a more realistic
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and attainable goal

 Eradication
• To eradicate something means to get rid of it
completely

• Definition of eradication emphasizes that routine

intervention measures are no longer needed
once interruption of transmission has been
certified worldwide ; smallpox

Eradication refers to the reduction to zero (or a very low defined target rate)
of new cases in a defined geographical area
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Elimination refers to the complete and permanent worldwide reduction to

zero new cases of the disease through deliberate efforts; neonatal tetanus
 • Emerging infectious diseases are infections that
have recently appeared within a population or
those whose incidence or geographic range is
rapidly increasing or threatens to increase in the
near future

• Emerging infections can be caused by: Previously

undetected or unknown infectious agents
e.g; Nipah Viral Encephalitis
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 • Re-emerging infectious diseases are diseases that
once were major health problems globally or in a
particular country, and then declined dramatically, but
are again becoming health problems for a significant
proportion of the population

– Malaria and tuberculosis are examples

– Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) and Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
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 Scope of preventive Vet Medicine
Global public health
collectively to assure the conditions in which people can
be healthy. This means:
• Protecting food security and safety
• Addressing threats to antibiotic sensitivity
• Preventing and controlling emerging infectious diseases
(many of which are zoonotic in nature)
• Protecting environments and ecosystems; engaging in
bio- and agro-terrorism preparedness and response
• Using our skills to confront non-zoonotic diseases
(vaccine preventable diseases, chronic diseases and
injuries)
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• Strengthening the public-health infrastructure; and

• Advancing medical science through research.
 Food safety
Food-borne illness is a major problem around the world,
causing serious mortality and morbidity. The global
spread of food-borne disease has been enhanced by
– Globalization of the food supply
– Intensified food production industries in developing
countries (trying to meet the needs of export
markets);
– Centralized processing of human and animal foods,
followed by widespread distribution; and
– Expanded markets in industrialized countries for
“ethnic foods”
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 Veterinary practitioners should provide guidance to
food operations on
– how to prevent infections in food animals
– participate in the conduct of disease surveillance in
both humans and food animals
– lead efforts to identify effective infection-control
interventions in slaughter and processing plants
– develop effective on-the-farm (including CAFOs)
interventions to reduce the prevalence of pathogens
in food animals; and
– provide leadership to minimize antibiotic resistance
stemming from antimicrobial use in food animals.
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 Environmental health
Veterinarians are natural leaders in finding solutions to
many
– environmental-health problems, including
investigations of harmful algal blooms,
– exposures to pesticides and toxins,
– responding to human-made and natural disasters,
and exposures to excessive noise, heat, and cold,
and cancer clusters
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 Emerging infectious diseases
– There is a strong link between emerging infectious
zoonotic diseases and increasingly greater interaction
among humans, livestock, and wildlife
– Infectious diseases globally cause over 13 million
deaths per year, affecting all people regardless of
age, gender, lifestyle, ethnicity, economic status, and
causing suffering, poverty, and challenges to
development in poor countries
– Approximately 75% of emerging diseases are
zoonotic
– the link between human and animal health, and
veterinary medicine’s responsibility to engage actively
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in identifying risk factors in preventing and controlling

these diseases.
 Bioterrorism preparedness and response
– Another area that is driving the impetus to link human
and animal health efforts is that of bio- and agro-
terrorism.
– As in emerging diseases, the majority of potential
agents in (CDC) categories A, B, and C are zoonoses
– In the emergency response to the World Trade Center
attacks, the efforts of veterinary–medical assistance
teams to provide medical care for working dogs were
well publicized.
– Less publicized were the efforts of CDC veterinarians
on staff as epidemiologists, who were at the front
lines leading surveillance efforts for human disease in
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local hospitals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2289
981/
 Public-health infrastructure
Given the recent spotlight on bioterrorism preparedness, it is clear
that veterinarian, in collaboration with other disciplines, must
– participate in disease surveillance and response;
– upgrade our laboratories and join the laboratory response
network;
– communicate risk
– aid in decontamination and environmental cleanup; and
– carry out important applied research
https://www.msdvetmanual.com/public-health/overview-of-public-
health/role-of-veterinarians-in-public-health-and-one-health
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128227947000
06X
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 Companion-animal medicine
– The area where veterinarians need to do much more
to protect human health in the companion-animal
medicine.
– Given the large number of people owning pets and
using the services of veterinarians there is a huge
opportunity for and responsibility of veterinarians to
counsel pet owners.
– Dog-bite prevention (an estimated 4.7 million dog
bites per year, 800,000 requiring medical attention),
– Prevention of zoonotic infections from their pets, and
– Public-health benefits of reducing the number of stray
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dogs and cats through neutering

 Non-zoonotic diseases
Advancing medical research
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