Two East African Pathology Workshops

by Dalen Agnew, DVM, PhD, DACVP

Two exciting 2-day workshops were held in Kampala, Uganda and Musanze, Rwanda on 20-21 Jun and 23-24 Jun, respectively, organized and supported by the Davis-Thompson Foundation, the Global Health Pathology Network, Gorilla Doctors, Makerere University, and the University of Rwanda. 

The first workshop kicked off with a whole day One Health Human and Veterinary Comparative Pathology Symposium.  Teams of veterinary and human medical pathologists, veterinarians, and veterinary and medical students worked through real-life outbreak scenarios involving diseases shared by humans and animals such as anthrax, trypanosomiasis, and viral hemorrhagic fever, and then shared their experiences and conclusions with the larger group in an engaging and educational interactive event.  The day was facilitated by Drs. Kathy Gabrielson, Dalen Agnew, and Ed Gabrielson from the US, and Drs. Julius Okuni and Robert Lukande from Makerere University.  On the second day, veterinary students learned and practiced basic ruminant and poultry prosection techniques and worked through another set of common poultry and small ruminant disease scenarios. 

Small group of One Health practitioners working through a scenario facilitated by Dr. Robert Lukande.
Makerere University veterinary students practicing their gross postmortem skills with Dr. Kathy Gabrielson and Dr. Dalen Agnew.

The second workshop held in Musanze, Rwanda at the headquarters of the Gorilla Doctors consisted of a first day of lectures and interactive case studies, including a zoom review of the identification of metazoans in tissue with Dr. Sarah Poynton, and a comprehensive review of primate diseases with Dr. Linda Lowenstine.  On the following day, University of Rwanda veterinary students (who had traveled 6 hours to attend), learned and practiced poultry and swine prosection skills, and then returned to Gorilla Doctors HQ for interactive case discussions.  These sessions were facilitated by Drs. Gabrielson, Agnew, and Jean Bosco Noheri of the Gorilla Doctors. 

After completing their postmortem training, Rwandan veterinary students and Drs. Gabrielson, Agnew, and Noheri pose for a photo outside the original veterinary hospital (Virunga Veterinary Center) built for the mountain gorilla project by Dian Fossey and Dr. Jim Foster in Kinigi, Rwanda.
Veterinary students from University of Rwanda (Nyagatare Campus) working through several pathology case scenarios in a tent erected at the Gorilla Doctors’ headquarters in Musanze, Rwanda. 

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Wilson Yau