In most cases, conversations about preventive medicine in dogs and cats are usually focused on two aspects: vaccination or deworming. However, once the veterinarian adopts a global vision, that is, the focus a single Health, discovers that really veterinary preventive medicine It is everything that entails preventing a pathological process.
“You can’t see it as something very particular, it doesn’t work that way. Preventive medicine is a number of actions aimed at educating, preventing and controlling”, He explained Carlos Munguía Hernándezgraduated at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics of the UNAM, in statements for Veterinary newspaper.
Preventive medicine is An educational process and, on the other hand, An adaptive process “In which the tutor understands what the concept of the problem is, how it will prevent it and, at the time, how we are going to keep it controlled,” he added.
In addition, it is also A permanent processwell The behavior of some diseases is predisposed to change and “everything that was known no longer works in the same way.”
Preventive medicine in the day -to -day life of the Veterinary Clinic
In the day to day of his profession, Carlos Munguía tries to explain to the tutor of a pet “that what he stops doing (the owner) will have an impact on his own health.” To exemplify this, Munguía resorts to review together with the tutors one of the most common situations: take a dog to walk so that it can defecate. “What most tutors always tell me is that this is fertilizer. But the first thing I explain from the technical point of view is that an excrement left in the grass generates methane gas, does not biodegrada, which has A greenhouse effect”Said the veterinarian.
And if, in addition, the owner lives in an area that tends to flood during the rains, when lowering the water, the excrement that was left and can bring parasites because the dog is not delayed more than once a year or none, it will dry and become polluting. And this is how, through the wind, this waste It can infect other animals or humans. This situation is a good example to explain the concept a single health, dynamic with which preventive medicine should work and somehow involves all actors: animals, humans and environment.
“If you did not do from the beginning what corresponded to you, that it was to carry an adequate preventive medicine in your patient, a coprological diagnosis to know what type of parasites had, you caused with your handles that would be generated to the best flood and it brought as a consequence the pollution, and that pollution in its defect contaminated the food that you just consumed. You are responsible for your own disease”Carlos Munguía urged.
In the words of the veterinarian, preventive medicine “is easy if we do it with understandable words for most people; what I just explained is the clear example of an epidemiological triad but in a simplified way, as simple as it is.” The application and education of preventive medicine “are one of the things we have to emphasize to achieve a benefit for everyone, for public health”He added.
Awareness work
“If you assume that people are aware that there is a risk, from here we are wrong,” warned the public health specialist. Therefore, veterinarians They have the responsibility of publicizing all the dangers to which both the pet and the tutor and nearby actors are exposed to prevent.
However, preventive medicine also It must be focused “to a group or work or work groups; you cannot assume that all patients work the same. But you also have to Look for the way protection is in the largest possible number of characters”, Said Carlos Munguía.
A clear example of the above is when a tutor has a Carlino or Pug dog. In this case, the veterinarian must emphasize the existence of different canine respiratory diseases and how these can specially harm this dog, because this type of dog is a Brachiocephalic patient. In first -level public medical care and in the daily private consultation, they are Veterinarians who take the first step to disseminate the necessary information to make preventive medicine possible.
Need to promote a single health
Because, for approximately two years, Carlos Munguía began to give conferences around preventive medicine and public health in small species, he ensures that the vision of current professionals, which are a fundamental part of the students’ training process, “is aimed precisely to a single health,” Vision that makes it easier to understand preventive medicine. However, There are still some universities that do not handle this point of view.
“Not everyone has the same worldview of the situation, and I mention it as a worldview because in the end, this is a process where We are all involved, where Even people who have nothing to do with medicine properly, it is also involved”Said the expert.
According to Munguía’s experience, What is necessary to teach preventive medicine is not yet being done why, In the public area, there is still vision that human medicine is the only important one, or veterinarians do not know their impact on public health.
“Each of the actors sees things from its trench and the interesting part of this is to make this vision a where it is understood that the veterinarian must have an impact on the surgeon, so that, in turn, this has an impact on the nurse, on The responsibility we have within public health and how we prevent it through disease prevention in animals”He stressed.
Measures to promote preventive medicine
Determining what are the actions that are needed to achieve a preventive culture is extremely complex. On the one hand, as indicated by Carlos Munguía, implies economic costs, as well as human resources, knowledge teaching and their replication.
However, according to the specialist, three concepts could function as a basis: visualize the health-disease process as part of the vision Health; the education“Taking into account that not everyone learns in the same way”, which implies that programs in both public health and private health are aimed at the group in which they will work, and the way to influence it is determined according to their characteristics, and in turn to make the veterinarians understand the group in which they are found; And finally, understand that preventive medicine must be interprofessionala process where All are responsible for influencing a condition.
“You do not need to technically explain people about the health-disease process, You need to explain what people need to understand To be much easier for them to transmit to the people with whom they have first contact regarding the disease, to be able to guide medical care in tutors and patients, ”concluded Carlos Munguía.
