It has a mandate to help support member states in the surveillance, prevention, and control in humans and animals of new, emerging, and re-emerging zoonoses of public health importance, animal diseases with implications for human health, and resistance to antimicrobial agents in animals with implications for human medicine. Given that many of the etiologic agents and infectious diseases in humans that have been recognized in the past two decades are zoonotic, the need for even more veterinary collaboration and input is evident. Currently, four veterinarians are working in the Zoonotic Diseases unit. Some of the areas of ongoing work for the unit are rabies surveillance and control, brucellosis control, xenotransplantation issues, surveillance of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and antimicrobial resistance issues. Dr. Birmingham was appointed by the Polio Eradication Activity of the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is an epidemiologist coordinating surveillance for the polio eradication initiative and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
Opportunities exist for veterinarians to volunteer their time at WHO headquarters.
In 1997, Dr. Ashley Robinson from the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, spent several weeks in Geneva reviewing epidemiology teaching modules and brucellosis and tuberculosis investigation and surveillance, and assisting with forward planning for a 1998 meeting on future trends and needs in veterinary public health, especially in developing countries. In addition to the veterinarians working in Geneva, several others work for the Program on Veterinary Public Health of the Pan American Health Organization, which is the WHO regional office for the Americas.