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Empowering a Nation

The same things that someone in North Carolina wants are the same thing an Iraqi wants - to be safe, to have a place to call home and not to constantly worry that something will happen to them.

Prema Arasu, professor in parasitology at the College of Veterinary Medicine

By Dave Pond, Web Communication

As Iraqis continue to rebuild their country in hopes of finding the safety, shelter and prosperity that we as Americans enjoy each day, a group of U.S. educators - including Prema Arasu, professor in parasitology at NC State University's College of Veterinary Medicine - has come together to lend its collective expertise to the cause.

The team has held a pair of workshops to help Iraq's governmental, academic, private-sector and scientific leaders formulate a new health plan to wipe out livestock diseases affecting the economy and food supply in a country battling animal and human health issues since Saddam Hussein's fall from power.

"They were left with nothing, because previously, the government controlled everything and told them what needed to be done," Arasu said. "From being very self-sufficient in food - including exporting very highly desired breeds of sheep abroad - the Iraqis now face a number of major disease outbreaks and they also have limited opportunity to graze their animals because there is limited security in place.

"There is no structure - the ministries need to be built up again and start from scratch," she said. "We felt the challenge was to empower them not from our capacity but to give them the sense that their next years ahead were in their hands."

In August of 2006 - accompanied by the U.S. contingent - approximately 100 Iraqi leaders gathered in Irbil began to look at what was being done in similar war-torn zones across the globe - areas which had seen tremendous animal-health improvement in a short time frame.

"This was not a time for us to go there to tell the Iraqi people, 'This is how we do it, so this is how you should do it,'" Arasu said. "Nobody was going to be able to help them like they would be able to help themselves.

"The folks in the government, academia, private sector and diagnostic facilities were not used to interacting with each other, so this first meeting was really a chance to have them thinking first as individuals and then bringing it up to the provincial level and then the state level to see how everything could be affected by individual effort and change."

Arasu said she was astonished by how quickly the diverse group of Iraqi leaders came together to make significant inroads into formulating animal health regulations.

"We were amazed about how quickly they jumped on board and came up with their own plan," she said. "They voted for what they had identified as priorities and they came up with majority consensus and felt ownership with that.

"They really valued our participation and wanted to continue to have interaction and be a part of a follow-up scientific conference," Arasu said. "They saw for themselves the deficiencies they had in their knowledge and training, and they just felt that they needed more to help them move along."

So in January, the U.S. team returned overseas, this time to Damascus, Syria - a bordering country to Iraq that offered a safe haven to hold the second workshop. The Iraqis either traveled by land across cross the border or took a chartered plane from Baghdad, but with so much regional conflict, it proved a difficult trip for some more than others - even though the two countries have diplomatic relations.

"One fellow named Ali - which is typically not a name from that region - was kidnapped and threatened at gunpoint," Arasu said. "Fortunately, he was of the right religious sect, according to his kidnappers, so he was able to eventually pass through. He was released, but they actually held three husbands and let their wives go."

Another attendee - a veterinary school dean who was in attendance at the first workshop - arrived by taxi to Syria's point of entry only to find that guards had already left for the day. For safety reasons, his driver refused to leave him at the border, so the pair spent the night huddled in the taxi, turning on the heat as needed to ward off the fierce winter chill.

"The Iraqi people want this so badly, so they were willing to go through some real hardship to come meet with the group," Arasu said. "You talk to the Iraqis and it's amazing - they go through so much. It really motivated, encouraged and inspired us as well."

At an earlier organizational meeting, the Iraqis identified five diseases causing significant hardship in their country and in January, the contingent set about designing a plan to eradicate them from the animal supply. Arasu, an expert parasitologist, focused on Echinococcus - a small tapeworm sustained between dogs and livestock that can cause devastating disease in humans.

"There is a lot of this tapeworm disease there and it's pretty well-documented," she said. "Routinely, people do not use slaughterhouses when preparing meat - whatever they don't use [for human consumption] they will literally chuck over the wall and it gets consumed by the stray dogs," she said.

"Through the current Iraqi food practices, it is possible for humans to accidentally ingest the infective eggs of this tapeworm and the larva can grow into tumor-like cysts anywhere in the body from the abdomen to the brain."

Since the first workshop, Arasu and her team members have held monthly conference calls on a variety of technical and logistical issues while continuing to help the Iraqis build their animal health program. The U.S. experts freely review initiatives put together in Iraq, helping leaders to ensure the practicality and cost-effectiveness of each program they've designed to combat the targeted maladies.

But just as importantly, the U.S. team continues to encourage and mentor their Iraqi counterparts as they fight to restore their country's animal health. Even the shortest email can make a huge difference in giving them a sense of support and goodwill, Arasu said.

"We related to each other as people wanting the same things," she said. "All of us recognize that that this gives them hope, so it was critical for our team to not just be professional and bring our expertise to the table, but to be people sensitive in bringing a high level of interpersonal communication to the Iraqi veterinarians."

As NC State continues in its efforts to serve others around the world, it's important to realize the opportunity is there for those of us on campus to make change - even if the work is done right here in North Carolina.

"This has opened up an avenue where we can directly contribute to global health," Arasu said. "We want to have our students and faculty engaged in global research, extension and educational opportunities because the same things that someone in North Carolina wants are the same thing an Iraqi wants - to be safe, to have a place to call home and not to constantly worry that something will happen to them.

"To build that inter-country, intercultural rapport is essential to recognizing that the world is truly a global village."

Related Links:

• About Dr. Arasu 
• College of Veterinary Medicine
  

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