Veterinary parasitologists: not lost but proactive!

Abstract

The letter ‘Parasitologists lost?’ by Barnish et al. [1] records the concern of medical parasitologists that, if present trends continue, there will soon be no teachers with the necessary skills and background knowledge to impart broad field experience and to give instruction in basic, but important, diagnostic skills. This problem is not unique to medical parasitology because the same tendency has been evident for some time in veterinary parasitology. Of course, in western countries, the overall importance of animal parasitism is decreasing. Over the past three decades, great progress has been made towards the improved control of many important parasitic infections of domesticated animals. These advances have been achieved mainly through the introduction of highly efficient antiparasitic drugs and also through a better understanding of the epidemiological factors that determine disease and of parasite bionomics (i.e. environmental influences on developmental dynamics of non-parasitic life-cycle stages). In more recent years, immunology and molecular biology have contributed new knowledge, which is gradually being applied to diagnosis, molecular epidemiology and vaccine development. Nevertheless, new problems are constantly appearing that demand specialist input from veterinary parasitologists. Recent examples are listed in Box 1. For additional information on the current problems and needs of veterinary parasitology, see Refs 2 and 3.