Georgetown : The Humanitarian Aid Programme (HAP) through the embassy of the United States of America has gifted the Animal Health laboratory in the Ministry of Agriculture compound with five microscopes valued US$5000 to assist their effort at removing parasites from livestock.
Minister of Agriculture Dr. Leslie Ramsammy and Chief Executive Officer, Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA) Dr. Dindiyal Permaul received the items from Director, HAP, Melanie Collins and Project Manager, Sharon Houston.
Dr. Ramsammy said, “We are endeavouring to ensure that we build a comprehensive animal health laboratory so that not only can we provide safe and quality food for our people, but also ensure that we meet the sanitary and phytosanitary standard that allow us to export.”
Guyana, he stated wants to be a major exporter of meat, meat products and milk to the Caribbean and other countries. “Our vision, 2020, is to see Guyana a meat products, dairy products exporting country. That ambition can only be realised if we have a good quality animal health laboratory and so this support that we been getting and continue to get from USAID is critical,” he said.
Minister Ramsammy said that the 2020 ambition has seen much emphasis being placed on training of animal health personnel including veterinarians and lab technicians, in all labs across Guyana.
It is also towards this end that the ministry will be putting in place a database on the Veterinary Practioner’s Act, a Veterinary Council to register all veterinarians and veterinary technicians in the country, Minister Ramsammy said.
The animal health lab was started with the assistance of USAID and other partners in 2006 merely to be a sample collection facility that would send the specimen out for testing.
Permaul explained that during an earlier programme with the collaboration of the embassy, which looked at the contribution of veterinary medicine to poverty alleviation, particularly among the Region Three farmers who were dependent on the livestock, which were few, it was recognised that the absence of microscopes in certain key and critical areas particularly under field conditions mitigated again farmers doing well in their production techniques.
He explained that GLDA staff benefited from a few credit hours of lectures and practical sessions on parasitology from HAP.
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