President’s column
The past few months have been busy for the Executive Officers and there has been the opportunity to promote the work of the CVA in a number of important forums.
Our highlight this year was recognition of the CVA’s Golden Jubilee and fifty years of volunteering and contribution to make a difference. The Kenyan Veterinary Association is also celebrating fifty years of achievement and invited the CVA to combine with them for a joint scientific conference. This was held in Nairobi, Kenya, the last week of April. We took this opportunity to fund African Councillors, including from West Africa, to have a CVA African Regional Meeting. The program organisation included the opportunity for CVA members to join with the KVA to celebrate World Veterinary Day.
I was a guest at the annual Australian Veterinary Association national conference held in Melbourne, June this year. I was invited to address the annual general meeting and talked about the CVA attaining its 50 year Golden Jubilee and its work on continuing professional development.
Our Treasurer, Deb Kirton, attended the Federation of Asian Small Animal Veterinary Associations (FASAVA) conference in August on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The four-day program provided cutting edge speakers and issues across 8 streams.
Jeff Cave has continued to work hard as our CVA Program Manager and Communications Officer. You know this from his great contribution in monthly e-newsletters and our CVA Website.
The 33rd World Veterinary Conference was held in Incheon the last week of August in South Korea. The program had a very strong focus on the contributions of veterinarians to improve the lives of humans http://wvc2017korea.com . Dr Abdul Rahman and I were sponsored to attend and were able to promote the work of the CVA.
Our Past President, Abdul Rahman, attended the World Small Animal Veterinary Association meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark in the last week of September http://www.wsava2017.com/scientific-information/scientific-programme#.WfHOkEyQ1PM The CVA became an Affiliate member of WSAVA in 2016 and this association will be an important alliance to meet the needs of CVA Members in relation to small animal matters.
Other activities and contributions include the CVA providing funds to build a veterinary website for the Caribbean countries and continuation of our book program. This year we were able to also send a donated x-ray developer to Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. A donated anaesthetic machine was shipped to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. We were also grateful to an Australian practitioner who donated veterinary instruments to The Gambia.
We are now moving into the last two months of the year and it is time to reflect on the importance of the CVA, particularly as we plan the seventh Pan Commonwealth Veterinary Conference (PCVC7) in Bangalore, India, the first week of March 2019. Australasian members of the CVA Executive took advantage of Dr Rahman visiting family in Australia to meet in Sydney in early October to start planning for this PCVC7. You would have seen that our hard working Treasurer, Deb Kirton has sent out invoices to our Councillors for Membership subscription for 2017-18. This is a very important period of planning for us and we of course cannot deliver for you without funds. I would just reinforce that the CVA will not sponsor Councillors to attend the PCVC7 if their country membership subscriptions are not paid.
Best wishes to all
Peter
