Dr. Mario Dantas PhD.
General Director of EMBRAPA/Centro de Pesquisa Agropecuario do Pantanal
Animal trypanosomosis is a serious problem in most of Africa where it is necessary to use drugs to control the disease in cattle herds. In South America outbreaks have occurred affecting cattle and horses and causing significant damage to the livestock industry. It seems that the responsible sanitary authorities have not paid the attention demanded by this disease. Meanwhile the occurrence of salivarian trypanosomes is increasing and through infesting new areas is now affecting a major proportion of livestock in the principal breeding regions.
This meeting has two very important aspects: first, it is the first one to be carried out through Internet, offering the opportunity for specialists world-wide to exchange ideas, opinions and experience on this subject; second, it plays an important role in bringing the problem to the attention of responsible authorities, researchers, students and farmers. This meeting also offers the opportunity to establish partnerships among different people and different institutions all over the world. The objective of using this wonderful comunications network is to join together the specialists in salivarian trypanosomosis and to create a forum for debate.
Fifteen lectures are listed for presentation during the week. Participants are encouraged to ask questions, to present their comments and suggestions and to share their experience with us.
We, in Embrapa-Pantanal, are so glad that Roberto Aguilar and Alberto Davila had the good idea to organize this meeting. We would like to congratulate them on behalf of all of you who are participating in this meeting. We hope that the discussions will be useful and that the results may be used to improve our scientific knowledge of these diseases and contribute to the development of new and effective control mechanisms and management practices.
We wish all of you a profitable meeting and hope that it will not be the last one. It would be our hope that as a result of this meeting we could make one big research project that would join together people from different parts of the world. We believe that FAO, EC and other similar organizations should support a such a project.
All of you are welcome to this event. Have a very nice meeting.
