40 years of Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium: four decades of dedication, innovation and collaboration to support livestock keepers all around the world. From the fight against rinderpest to sustainable livestock keeping, this article will tell you how a small initiative grew into an organisation with global impact.
Symposium: “Bridging gaps with One Health: challenges & opportunities in the Global South”
Our Annual General Meeting was held on Thursday 27 June. We took the opportunity to organise our first symposium on the “One Health” approach, with guests from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, the Royal Museum for Central Africa and Médecins du Monde Belgium.
One Health: our pilot project in South Kivu on video
Discover the challenges of the unique One Health project developed by Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium, Médecins du Monde and Action pour le Développement des Milieux Ruraux in South Kivu.
Supporting displaced populations: our mission in South Kivu
Since April 2021, the village of Bwegera in South Kivu has been hosting displaced families from the highlands and uplands of Uvira territory. The inter-ethnic conflicts there are so violent that many residents have been forced to flee their homes, leaving everything behind. Since October 2021, we have been intervening on the ground to offer assistance to the displaced population and their hosts.
DR Congo: an unprecedented One Health project in the heart of an area at risk from new, emerging pandemics
The Congolese people who live around the Kahuzi-Biega National Park share their homes with their livestock and go into the forest every day, where disease-carrying wild animals live. In doing so, they unwittingly expose themselves to zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans, which is how pandemics such as Covid-19 begin. This observation has prompted the consortium composed of Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium, Médecins du Monde and Action pour le Développement des Milieux Ruraux to develop an unprecedented One Health project to the east of this nature reserve in South Kivu.
“A healthy planet” – why we protect the environment as well
At the beginning of the year, we updated our slogan to read: “Healthy animals, healthy people, healthy planet.”That change has to do with our desire to emphasise the importance of the environment in our unique vision of health, as well as in our activities.
One Health: improving health risk management in Niger
Between 2017 and 2020, we implemented a programme with Médecins du Monde in Niger. Our aim was to improve health risk management by strengthening human and animal health services. This pilot project was guided by the principles of the One Health approach.
One Health, a holistic approach to address the key challenges of livestock keepers in the South
The VSF International network, of which we are a member, focussed on the added value of One Health to improve the well-being of humans, animals and the environment in the South. Check out their new publications.