Editorial
Johannesburg - South Africa is staring down the barrel of another crisis. It seems almost impossible for yet another crisis, given the scale and scope of Eskom’s impending collapse and the spillover effects to almost every aspect of our lives, but this one is no less serious.
As we report today, we are running out of vets. The international average is 200-400 vets per million population, South Africa has 60 to 70. We only have one institution that produces our veterinary surgeons, the University of Pretoria, and those that it does graduate are fast finding greener pastures overseas.
The fact that South African vets can obtain better work internationally is down to key factors: the exceptionally high standard of training they receive at UP – and the standard of life they can expect here, versus the perks and packages of work overseas.
The unenlightened might scoff at the brain drain of doctors for pampered pets, but looking after companion animals is a tiny fraction of the scale of veterinary science. We need vets to ensure the health of our livestock.
Simply put, if we don’t have enough vets, we place even further strain on our food security, with inadequate protection against infectious viral diseases. None of us are old enough to remember the rinderpest that killed up to 90% of southern African cattle herds; very few will remember myxomatosis, foot and mouth disease, swine flu ‒ mostly because they hit other countries in other continents far harder.
We cannot take that chance. There is little we can do quickly to stop the brain drain or produce more vets, which is the appeal by the SA Veterinary Council for the government to declare the profession a critical skill and facilitate the recruitment of foreign vets is the best possible short-term solution.
The government dare not dither on this issue.