Mongolia - Diary of a field worker / Day 2

In Mongolia ASIA is carrying out a project with Mongolian veterinarians to counter the various diseases affecting livestock and a methodology suited to dzud resilience. ASIA's Project Manager is Anna, a 35-year-old veterinarian who has been in Mongolia since the start of the project and, through her account, describes what happens in the field.

Day 2

After a brief meeting with the provincial Director of the Agriculture Department, caught up in a thousand commitments like all the authorities of this world, we are handed over to the Director of the Provincial Veterinary Laboratory, who takes us to meet the private veterinarians working in the city.

Outpatient veterinary services were privatised, like many other structures, with the fall of the socialist government after 1991. The veterinarians’ curiosity about the parallel European reality is so great that I can hardly ask my own questions: “What do you use in Europe for this? Do you have this other thing? And what is that like?”.

Brave veterinarians who, even with limited means, have to look after the health of 30-40 thousand head of livestock each, at distances that can even exceed a hundred kilometres. And we end our meeting precisely on the subject of working materials, since the supply of veterinary equipment is the second of the activities to be carried out.

Finally, a visit to the Laboratory allows us to better understand the epidemiological surveillance system of which it is the reference point, a particularly important system in a country where animal production is one of the most relevant economic sectors.

On the wall of the main building, before entering, I see a large inscription in Cyrillic characters and ask what it means: “The human doctor is responsible only for the person, but the veterinarian is responsible for all living beings”, how much truth there is in a reality where human, animal and environmental health are closely linked and, as I was saying, dependent on one another.

And between women directors, district heads and veterinarians, once again since I have been here I am positively surprised by how many women in senior positions there are in Mongolia: “You’ll see how strong Mongolian women are”, they had warned me. Hats off. And much to be taken as an example.

Read also the account of day 1 of the mission>>

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