Uganda veterinary council a timely reinforcement for animal health

________________

OPINION

By Solomon Kalema Musisi

On Saturday, the animal health fraternity welcomed a nine-member Uganda Veterinary Council, inaugurated in Entebbe by Animal Industry State Minister Bright Rwamirama.

While this may easily be taken for an ordinary ceremony, it is a major addition to a series of strategic steps in the timeline of vet practice in Uganda. This profession was little known before the arrival of the first British veterinarian in Uganda in 1908.

For the next 54 pre-independence years, vet service in Uganda only received three more major boosts in the form of a public veterinary department, instituted in 1921, the introduction of the Uganda Veterinary Board in 1958 and the addition of a faculty for veterinary medicine under Makerere University in 1971.

A series of steps aimed mainly at organising vets, protecting professionalism, improving vet education and stepping up regulation followed after independence.

Among these was the integration of a full-fledged department of animal health with three divisions under the Agriculture Ministry and the introduction of guidelines for Continuing Professional Development, known in short as CPD, by the veterinary board. Unlike many such programmes, CPD for veterinarians came with strict application, including both penalties for non-compliance and awards.

Following these guidelines, veterinarians are accorded credit points for every recognised training, clinical and non-clinical practice that they undertake, with a minimum requirement of 20 points without which they risk being deregistered by the board at the end of the year.

The most recent turning point for vet practice and regulation that birthed the Uganda Veterinary Council was the introduction of the Veterinary Practitioners’ Act, 2024, signed into law by President Museveni on May 14, 2024.

Among a series of timely changes, the law accords the council powers to register vet practitioners and para-professionals, and to license all organisations and institutions that intend to offer veterinary services against strict pre-qualification and requirements.

As highlighted by Rose Ademun, the commissioner for animal health in the Agriculture Ministry, the council replaces the veterinary board and will, with a larger mandate, apply the law to handle impostors, fight misuse of animal drugs and other measures that should protect both the livestock farm enterprises and the vet profession.

While the board managed vet surgeons, the council, as described by Ademun, will also manage vet para-professionals.

The introduction of a vet council comes within the month of the commissioning of a national dairy centre of excellence in Mbarara by Agriculture Minister Frank Tumwebaze on October 14, and the completion of trials for NAROVAC1, an anti-tick vaccine developed by Ugandan scientists.

For a country where the number of livestock-keeping households has grown from a mere 4.5 million in 2008 to about 6.8 million, going by figures from the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), any step towards reinforcing animal production and health should be considered timely.

It is such steps that will also help sustain and add to gains made in areas like milk production, which grew 10-fold to 5.4 billion litres between 2017 and 2024, as highlighted by President Museveni in the 2025 State of the Nation Address.

The writer is a Senior Knowledge Management Officer

Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries