Veterinary Public Health

Health Sector Challenges

The VPH program is applied to issues surrounding the Essential Public Health Functions (EPHFs), developed by the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and the Pan American Health Organization to improve public health leadership practice.

It takes into account the findings of a 2001/2002 study that indicated Caribbean countries performed very weakly in "Quality Assurance in Personal and Population Based Health Services" and in "Public Health Research". In the latter case, the assessment showed that there was little or no allocation of resources to this function by Ministries of Health, and that there were poor linkages with the educational institutions to influence their research agendas. Not much has changed since the 2001/2002 assessment, but there is still a role for the VPH program in research activities, whether linked to communicable diseases or non-communicable diseases associated with veterinary drug residues and chemical additives in foods.

The VPH program is restricted by Human resource challenges including:

• regulation of health professionals,
• harmonization of training programs,
• high costs of training outside of the respective countries and the sub-region,
• the lack of human resource plans, and
• poor performance management.

The VPH program is committed to contributing to

• increase in the public health workforce,
• building leadership capacity, and
• fostering greater partnership and alliance with sub-regional tertiary institutions particularly in the areas of research and training.