INTERVIEW

 

Interviewer: Can we meet you sir?

Dr. Emmanuel: I am Emmanuel Adeaga, the general secretary of SAVAN (Small Animal Veterinary Association, Nigeria), with counterparts in the UK VSAV and globally as World Small Animal Veterinary Association WSAVA, a regional body called ASCAN, African Small and Companion Animal Network, with national associations in Kenya Nairobi and others

What is SAVAN about?

It is a body that is created to improve the clinical competence of clinicians for them to be able to deliver excellent services to primarily the patient and by extension the client. We have a global community where there is continuous improvement here in here out and we have a lot of groups like the therapeutic guideline group, welfare guideline and others where global best practices are being enshrined for other members of the association to follow. SAVAN was born out of wanting to be exceptional despite the limitation of the environment. Small Animal is a peculiar practice unlike public health or poultry, concerned with the overall health of a population, it puts into consideration the peculiarity of the individual patient. You don’t treat two patients the same why and it is important that you are on top of your game.

There are a lot of advances, we have members practicing all over the world with some who have CT scan in their practices, using them for diagnosing. So, in the community we engage, when they have cases they show us what they have done and how they arrived at their diagnosis, narrow down complicated cases including neurological cases that people don’t want to handle that they have handled with excellent results. We have resource persons all over the world.

When one is able to provide value with precision, money will flow in the direction of value. So, just create the value and money will follow after the value that you have created.

If as students we join SAVAN, do we get access to trainings?

Yes, of course. We have a membership platform for clinical students, that is 500level and 600level. Our conference was in Lagos in 2017 and the second in Lagos also 2018, at that we sponsored students from the University of Ibadan, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta. The conference was paid for, their accommodations was catered for. Professor Eyarefe and Professor Omobowale brought in the students and now we have Dr Ajao Isaac who is one of the clinicians in PetCare Opebi today. Also, in 2019 we were in Abuja and we had students who were sponsored from as far as Sokoto, University of Abuja, ABU, mostly from the Northern school and they were also fully sponsored to participate in the conference. That created small animal and clinical interest in many of the students and many of them are doing quite well today, some are still members of the association till date and are still improving.

As a vet doctor, you are primarily a clinician even though later you can go into research and at SAVAN, clinical discussion is ever ongoing, the clinicians share information and all. For example, one of our resource persons is in the US and has a clinic there, he keeps us updated about the approach that they use to solve clinical problems over there, The Problem-Oriented Concept rather than our Differential approach to diagnosis here. With this, we are able to galvanize various view and experiences in our daily interaction and then we get better in our handling of cases and the clients become more and more confident in our practice in this part of the world.

How can we join the association as students?

What is currently available for students right now is mentorship and to anyone who is interested can reach me via my phone number 08*********

 

Interested students can ask the VNO board for Mr Emmanuel Adeaga’s phone number

PS: Joining the association is only open to interested clinical (500level and 600level) students.