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Vetarinary Education

Globalization and international trade of services have started to make visible effects in higher education, increasing the exchange of students and professionals through the new economic country groupings such as: NAFTA, CARICOM, CAN and MERCOSUR. Universities start exploring different alternatives to expand their academic offer beyond the frontiers of their own countries.

During the last years, Latin America has carried out important processes tending to improve the quality of university and professional education. At university level, the Accreditation processes are carried out through governmental or non-governmental entities. Likewise and in order to improve the quality of professional performance, mechanisms such as Certification procedures have been established to rate the abilities and skills of professionals giving service to society. A third aspect approached is the harmonization processes, in order to harmonize curricular schedules between the different programs, in order to facilitate the exchange of students and professionals at national and international level.

Education in Veterinary Sciences

Presently, in Latin America it is not the State but the private sector the one to sponsor the creation of veterinary medicine schools responding more to the family expectations in order to grant a university education to their children than to the real demands of the professional market. As a consequence, private universities are establishing veterinary medicine schools with the risk of doing so with great deficiencies since within university education, veterinary medicine is one of the high costs demanding careers due to the need of having sophisticated laboratories, clinical practices implying maintenance of animals and facilities and research programs, necessary to keep updated academic personnel to guarantee quality and advanced level of knowledge transmitted to students.

For this reason harmonization of the different veterinary medicine schools in Latin America is very important. They have developed the Veterinary Physician Profile as the professional that in order to improve the quality of life and sustainable human development, instilled with an ethical, scientific and humanistic spirit, is capable of “carrying out actions tending to the prevision, planning and solution of the problems arising in the different fields of the socio-cultural reality and its environment, in relation to everything which is direct or indirectly related to animal species.

FAO has made significant inputs in the development of Veterinary Sciences in Latin America at educational and professional level, through meetings, expert consultations and development of technical documents. During the last few years FAO has been a milestone in scientific meetings at continental level, organizing events of the Pan-American Association of Veterinary Sciences (PANVET), Pan-American Federation of Veterinary Sciences Faculties and Schools (FPEFCV) and other events organized by Universities and Professional Schools