European Society of Laboratory Animal Veterinarians (ESLAV) - A new forum for veterinarians
Hanna-Marja Voipio
University of Oulu, Finland
One of the newest society in the group of laboratory animal associations is ESLAV, the European Society of Laboratory Animal Veterinarians. ESLAV was founded 1996 during the FELASA symposium and immediately aroused great interest. The idea was to give veterinarians a forum to discuss issues within laboratory animal science � especially those of special importance to veterinarians. Making this society European, means that it is open to a large group of colleagues which probably would not meet in other connections.
The objective, according to the constitution is to promote and disseminate expert veterinary knowledge within the field of laboratory animal science � this is realised by meetings, lectures, discussions and publications. Furthermore, the constitution focuses on the importance of advancement of veterinary knowledge and skills, education, and collaboration with other society. These are certainly objectives worth an association and it is a real challenge to fulfil these goals in the way which creates a society the members are looking for.
Although ESLAV is still searching for different ways to work, there seems to be certain areas, where it already has shown to earn its place. Two scientific meetings have been organised, together with other associations. This seems also to be the trend in future: the next one-day workshop will be organised in connection to FELASA meeting in Aachen, and it will be open to non-members as well. The topic is always a current one: how to manage carry out a health monitoring procedure in practice. This continues the health monitoring theme begun in the previous meeting in Italy. Practical aspects and take home messages will be stressed in scientific meetings also in future.
New activities were started in the beginning of this year when the LAVA Briefing was published as a LAVA-ESLAV Briefing - with two yearly issues it is now a journal for ESLAV members, too, increasing the opportunities for discussion and information. Email for members is naturally working to spread the current information from inside and outside the society; and some interesting disease problems have already popped up on the screen. A novel idea is national representatives which means that each member country has its own, active person to be contacted with questions about ESLAV. All this seems to interest veterinarians working with laboratory animals. The number of members is increasing all the time, at present about 170 from 18 countries, including USA and China. Most of the members still come from Middle-Europe � in the number of Scandinavian memberships, Sweden is leading. But certainly the other Scandinavian countries will follow: ESLAV scientific meeting in 2003 will be held as a satellite meeting of Scand-LAS in Finland. Interested? Contact your national representative (Denmark: Axel Kornerup Hansen akh@kvl.dk; Finland: hanna-marja.voipio@oulu.fi, Norway: adrian.smith@veths.no; Sweden: christina.jacobson@astrazeneca.com) or visit the ESLAV website: http://www.eslav.org.
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