Up coming: Reptile Workshop in Melaka Zoo

We are planning to organise a workshop on Reptile Medicine for veterinarians at Melaka Zoo sometime in November 2010. This is the second workshop for veterinarians in Malaysia, since the one we had in June 2006, 1st SEAZA Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarian Training Course. Participants came from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. The 1st training course was a general introduction to wild and zoo animal medicine. We covered all groups of animals, including hoofstocks, carnivores (feline, canine, bears, civets), primates, birds, and reptiles in just 5 days. It was quite an exhausting experience, but a great one as well. In fact, I was so busy organising and keeping everything running like clockwork, I was sick before and all the way through the course. By the end of the course, I have disseminated much of my germs to most of the trainers, and perhaps some of the participants as well. Thousand apologies :-p.

This time around, we will only concentrate on diseases, medicine, and diagnostic methods (haematology, serum biochemistry, radiography, ultrasonography, and endoscopy) in reptiles. The great news is that Taipei Zoo, Taiwan ROC will fully sponsor this course.Therefore, the workshop is FOC! We hope to be able to open this workshop to veterinarians working in wild and zoo animal medicine within the Asian region. However due to the intensive nature of the workshop, we would only be able to accomodate 30 participants in total. Among the instructors are Dr Jason Chin, Deputy Director, Taipei Zoo; Dr Jane Yu, Chief Veterinarian of Animal Medical Centre, Taipei Zoo; and Dr Sera, Senior Veterinarian, Head of Reptile Section, Animal Medical Centre, Taipei Zoo. Also, one of the leading person on Reptile Medicine in Asian region, Dr Paolo Martelli, Head Veterinarian of Ocean Park Hong Kong, will also come in as one of the instructors, to share his immense experiences and knowledge.

We will be having the first meeting to discuss on this matter on 2nd August, it seems quite promising that this workshop will go through. We would expect much fun and loads of knowledge sharing during this 2-day workshop. Indeed, something to look forward to :-).