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ALUMNI AT WORK Veterinary science, personal training and the elephants of Laos... (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3) Two mobile veterinary units visit domesticated elephants at their place of work, conducting micro-chipping, worming and general veterinary treatment. The general health of the elephant is also discussed with the mahout (the elephant’s driver), with the Lao vet acting as translator. Importantly, reproduction is also discussed, with the aim of entering animals into a breeding contract as part of ElefantAsia’s ‘baby bonus’ scheme — an attempt to encourage mahouts to place their elephants in a breeding program in exchange for use of a motorised tractor to assist with the work usually undertaken by the elephant. The first pregnant cows from the program are expected to arrive early next year. Emma works with Dr Bertrand Bouchard, a French vet trained in Canada, and a local Lao vet (who is more like a veterinary technician by Australian standards). Her main role is to participate in the mobile unit field trips, which she thoroughly enjoys. The team stays in small guest houses in local villages, which are filled with local wildlife. In between the field trips, Emma works in the ElefantAsia office in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. She writes veterinary reports and helps plan reproduction programs and other initiatives, including a recent partnership with a private company to build an elephant sanctuary and breeding centre. ‘In Vientiane I live in a small house with one other young Indian girl who works at the UN. I love living in Vientiane. Every day I ride my pink bicycle to work through the dusty streets,’ she says. ‘There is a very active and interesting expat community here, many of whom are Australian and most of whom work for NGOs.’. A talented track and field athlete, Emma initially took six months off after completing her degree to finish competing in the Melbourne athletics season. But, having made the move to Laos, her love of athletics has certainly not being wasted. Emma has started up a personal training business for the significant expat population, plays in the netball team and trains with the ALF team. What’s more, she trains with and helps to coach the Lao athletics team. ‘I really enjoy the field work and in particular the challenges faced in working with such limited resources. When I first arrived I was very nervous that I might not be able to do the job. But I soon realised that ... limited resources make gold standard medicine impossible (and) … it is usually a matter of applying very basic veterinary first principles. It is really rewarding to see just what a difference very simple treatment can make,’ says Emma. However, there are also plenty of challenges: limited resources, the time taken to get to some remote locations for urgent treatment and the emotional effect of the living conditions for some local villagers to name but a few. On top of that, dealing with local mahouts is nothing like dealing with private clients in Melbourne. Most owners have a very limited level of education, which can make dealing with animal welfare issues difficult. Compounding matters, there is only one local Lao vet who speaks English. After a while, Emma also found her number being circulated amongst expats as a kind of free, 24-hour small animal vet for anyone wanting a second opinion. ‘I soon found myself spending my lunch breaks at the local pharmacies trying to do charades to obtain the drugs I needed. Trying to charade ‘oral prednisolone’ is not an easy task!’ says Emma. ‘The organisation greatly appreciates the work done by foreign veterinarians. The mobile veterinary unit is a central part of the organisation’s work. The language barrier is always a challenge but I’m slowly trying to learn Lao. My vocabulary has a strange veterinary and running focus. I knew the words for muscle cramp and diarrhoea before I knew the word for goodbye!’ Emma credits her University of Melbourne degree with helping her in this challenging role. ‘I think when I first arrived I underestimated just how much my degree has prepared me for a diverse range of veterinary work. I also don’t think I realised just how many applications there are for veterinary knowledge. My work here has ranged from simple clinical work with an individual elephant to designing breeding programs for a group of elephants or deciding on the best way to train mahouts to detect oestrus. The course gave me the research skills to investigate these areas and then use the information obtained for practical applications,’ she says. 4 www.muvs.unimelb.edu.au
ALUMNI AT WORK Looking ahead, Emma’s ultimate goal is to win acceptance into a residency program at a zoo in Australia. First, however, she plans to gain some more clinical experience, perhaps in the UK or Canada. How to help the elephants ElefantAsia is an NGO, so donations are greatly appreciated and can be made via the organisation’s website: www.elefantasia.org. Anyone interested in volunteering as a veterinarian can also find all the relevant information there. In addition, foreign veterinarians can help by sourcing and donating veterinary equipment. At the moment, ElefantAsia is looking to obtain an ultrasound machine to pregnancy test elephants involved in the baby bonus scheme. Contact emma@elefantasia.org for more information. Professor Brendan Crabb – Holding The Reins As Director of the Burnet Institute, Professor Brendan Crabb heads an organisation focused on helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. As an individual, his work in the field of infectious diseases in humans has earned prestigious awards, including the Bancroft-Mackerras Medal from the Australian Society for Parasitology in 2009 for his work towards a malaria vaccine. So it might come as a surprise that he cites occasions spent holding the reins of horses on farms as a major source of inspiration. Yet these experiences, which took place while he completed his PhD and post-doctoral research at the University of Melbourne’s School of Veterinary Science, have helped define his working life. In fact, the Burnet Institute’s unifying vision – “the linking of research with public health outcomes” – can be traced back to those years. “It was a fantastic springboard for a future in biomedicine and biological sciences,” says Professor Crabb, recalling the time he was forced to take the skills he was honing in the “comfort zone” of his lab into the field when Victorian farms were hit by a disease that caused abortions in pregnant mares. “You couldn’t hide yourself away in a lab – you were part of the response. I ended up talking on radio and speaking to owners about it, going to farms and managing the situation within a team. I remember thinking, ‘Is there any other field of molecular science where you would be exposed as much as this?’. “In situations like that, the work that you’re doing in research, which is often quite academic, isn’t enough; they want the new test and the new vaccine and it was that transitional aspect of science that was very real for me. A part of my course became solving a real problem for the industry and that idea – real problems solved with something practical – is the vet school way and it stuck with me.” Since completing his studies at theSchool of Veterinary Science, Professor Crabb has remained local and retained close ties with the university. He still holds Professorial appointments at Melbourne, La Trobe and Monash Universities and, prior to taking on his current role at the Burnet Institute, was Laboratory Head at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Today, he is responsible for 410 staff, including honours and PhD students from Melbourne and Monash Universities, and an annual Professor Brendan Crabb budget of $50m. It’s a substantial step up from running a lab but he says another lesson from his time at the School of Veterinary Science has stood him in good stead. “I was working with the best and brightest who, no matter what problem they are faced with, didn’t box themselves into being specialists, but had a ‘can do, we can fix it’ attitude,” he says. “As a result, I rarely tend to pigeonhole myself as a researcher but have gained the unrestricted confidence that veterinary graduates have. It’s not arrogance, just confidence, and has probably been more important for me than anything else.” He says his aim now is to have the Burnet Institute recognised as Australia’s centre of excellence for research in public health and education for the communities across the world that suffer the worst and have the least money. It’s an ambitious goal but one he sees reflected at the university – and the School of Veterinary Science. “I’m not a vet and was one of very few people doing a PhD at the Vet School at the time who weren’t yet it was a terrific place to do research as a science graduate,” he says. “The School of Veterinary Science is full of very high quality people who choose to put an academic life of learning ahead of the dollar and has only got better since I was there.” Dr co a f Un at www.muvs.unimelb.edu.au 5
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