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College of Veterinary Medicine Advance Newsletter

Improving the Health of Children and Dogs in Rural Tanzania

East African children lined up to receive deworming medication
On February 1, we began our first field season to investigate whether administering mass dog rabies vaccinations, along with mass deworming of children in hard to reach communities such as Maasai villages in northern Tanzania, can more effectively reduce the incidence of both diseases. » More ...

Message from the Dean: Eliminating Rabies

Portrait shot of Bryan Slinker
Rabies is never far from our minds here in your College of Veterinary Medicine. Aside from the occasional bat or other critter in the news, as we heard about here in Washington State this year when a cat was found infected with a strain of bat rabies, most people in the United States pay little heed to rabies. And with good reason. » More ...

A Student’s Serendipitous Summer in East Africa

Matt Sammons training technicians.
Matt Sammons (’16 DVM) thought he would be working in a lab collecting bacteria samples during his summer research trip to Kisumu, Kenya. Sammons, a Global Animal Health Professional Certificate student in the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, works with Dr. Douglas Call to learn how bacteria shared between human and animals might be related to malnutrition in children under five years of age. » More ...

Using Education to Reduce the Spread of Disease in Rural Guatemala

Maria Ortiz giving a presentation
Dawn in Candelaria, the day breaks; it will be cloudless and very hot. Following a breakfast with the family I am staying with during my community-based research work on zoonotic infectious diseases, I grab my bicycle and take off to visit several village households to evaluate the backyard livestock and invite the women of the village for our monthly meeting. » More ...

Freedom from the Cold Chain by Allowing Villagers to Help Themselves

East African boy sitting in the grass with a dog in his lap
The sun is not long up. Sitting on the step of my guesthouse, I can already see children walking down the dusty street with their dogs. Most of the dogs are trotting along freely by their owners’ sides, whilst a few are leashed with a piece of twine. One girl strolls past carrying a litter of puppies nestled into a bucket on her head. All are making their way to the center of the village where, in an hour’s time, the Serengeti Health Initiative team will begin vaccinating dogs against canine rabies. » More ...

Visiting Risper Oyogo: Just One of 1,500 Families Allen School Scientists are Following to Help Improve Health and Wellbeing

Dr. Otiang with Risper
It’s the last Thursday in August and today I am having the Kisumu County medical epidemiologist, Dr. Dickens Onyango, accompany me for a field visit to the Allen School research projects in the Lwak area, by the shores of Lake Victoria. At about 8 a.m., Dickens and I meet up at the West mall, the newest mall in Kisumu, where we quickly grab coffee and set off in one of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) field trucks. Our first stop is 14 kilometers north at the KEMRI Kisian Campus, a beautiful campus with neatly-manicured lawns and rows of well-aligned and mature umbrella trees providing a welcoming cool calm of shade. » More ...

Antibiotic Resistance: What the Allen School is doing to help solve this global health crisis

Doug Call and Beatus Lyimo in lab
Bacteria can do something remarkable. They can share genes. So, if one bacterium is resistant to a particular antibiotic, such as tetracycline, it can pass that resistant gene to another bacterium. That bacterium will become resistant and can pass its resistant gene to another bacterium. » More ...

Healthier Animals, Healthier Children

When asked about their “big five,” most travelers to Kenya will regale you with talk of lions, elephants, or Cape buffalo. My big five were a bit different. As part of Washington State University’s Global Animal Health Pathway, I traveled to western Kenya for a six-week clinical rotation in research methods during the winter of my clinical year of veterinary training. » More ...