Getting Behind

Hands on with a white rhino
June 18, 2010
I’m realizing the importance of a daily blog. Only three days into Envirovet 2010 and I’m impressed by the quantity of information and the quality of instruction. I can’t remember what I did yesterday because my brain is so full of valuable information from today! Thursday’s lectures included: linkages between human health and the environment, mitigating civil disparity and poverty, and transfrontier conservation areas. Dr. Pat Erickson discussed her work in the Dominican Republic which essentially strives to educate the community of Haitian adolescents who work in the sugar cane bateys of the DR on the HIV crisis and ways to protect themselves. The prevalence of HIV in Haitian community is approximately 10% - one of the highest in the world. We did an exercise where everyone in the class had to walk around and have a conversation with someone they did not know very well. We were instructed to take notes and converse for 3-4 minutes. I started talking with Chuma, a veterinarian in the Tanzanian National Parks. I learned that Chuma has been married for 6 years, has 2 young kids, has a favorite color of green, and a favorite animal of the elephant. We got into a good conversation, and before we knew it, our time was over. Then the instructors told us that each of the 3 group leaders had “HIV.” Everyone who talked to one of them was now infected and must stand at the front of the room. Soon, more than half of the students were standing at the front. Now they asked, if you talked to anyone standing at the front, you were then also infected with HIV. The remaining students moved to the front and soon, only Chuma and I were standing at the back. Lesson learned: having a long-term relationship (or in this case, conversation) greatly reduces your risk of HIV transmission…yay for monogamy!
Dr. Steve Osofsky from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) lectured on the new concept of African Transfrontier Conservation Areas, which essentially aims to drop physical boundaries between national parks in southeastern Africa. This idea would hopefully serve to increase available roaming spaces for free-ranging wildlife and increase ecotourism to the countries involved. The idea also has a sociopolitical advantage, improving relations between countries that share wildlife and benefit from the economic pull of their animals.
The underlying theme for Thursday’s lectures was that conservation work doesn’t always mean working directly with animals. Sometimes a project brings you to a country where your greatest need as a health care professional is not as a veterinarian but as a health care advocate. In order to help a nation’s animals you must first gain the trust and build solidarity with the people. To improve wildlife habitat it may require an economic equation, proving that such changes would bring prosperity to the country. To put it simply, conservation requires a multi-dimensional approach.