The World Organization for Animal Health (WHOH) in the period of March 28-30, 2023 in Almaty, organized a subregional seminar for the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus to raise awareness about the development of veterinary personnel.

he seminar was attended by delegates of veterinary services and educational institutions from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

The speakers were: M. Taitubaev, Head of the WHO Sub-Regional Coordination Office, WHO international experts D. Morozov (Belarus), V. Sharandak, John Woodford (England), Pasang Tshering (Bhutan), Heather L. Engleking (USA).

The purpose of the seminar was to raise awareness of participants on the evaluation of the effectiveness of performance indicators of veterinary services (the “PVS Path”), approaches to the development of veterinary personnel, the role of paraveterinars (PV) in veterinary services, as well as on the content/use of tools such as the competence/curriculum guidelines developed for PV and legislation.

The WHO is developing a Veterinary Personnel Development Program to create tools and approaches to support member countries in the assessment and development of veterinary personnel. Veterinary service personnel are often a combination of veterinarians and paraveterinarians (PV). The assessment of human resources, planning and capacity building of these categories of personnel helps countries to achieve the goal of maximizing the effectiveness of veterinary services. Following the results of the seminar, the participants mastered the understanding of the factors contributing to the creation of favorable conditions for the effective use of various categories of personnel in veterinary medicine, familiarization with the regional situation of veterinary personnel and para-veterinary specialists.