Making a World of Difference

November 19, 2003

By Andrew Vowles

Prof. John McDermott
Photo by Herb Rauscher

"King" seemed like rather a grand epithet. After all, Prof. John McDermott, Population Medicine, had only just been upgraded from a tent to a hut in a southern Sudanese village of less than 1,000 people. And in a part of the world that accorded status solely on a person's livestock head count, this Canadian veterinarian might have been considered among the lowest of the low.

"If you don't have cattle in Dinka society, you don't belong," says McDermott, recalling his first experience in Africa two decades ago as a then-fledgling veterinary graduate from U of G. As with other pastoral societies, social and kinship relations - even matters of personal honour and integrity - were interwoven with ownership of livestock. "For the Dinka, it's not a livelihood strategy, it's a vocation."

But as a veterinarian, he found that he and his wife, Brigid, also a Guelph grad, had something better: ties to the developed world that offered the prospect of economic development and hope for the Sudanese.

"Veterinarians were kings," he says, explaining that his title allowed him to ask questions and gain insights into their lives. "For me, it was fantastic. You're dealing with the most important thing in their lives."

Since then, much of that East African country has been overrun by civil war. And McDermott himself has moved on. Having begun a leave of absence from U of G in 1997 as a researcher with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Nairobi, Kenya, he was named the organization's deputy director general and research director earlier this year.

His experience in Africa has given him another insight. Besides showing him the importance of livestock in rural people's lives, vet studies have provided an entree into international development and the use of science to better the lot of developing countries, he says.

"There are so many things you can do to help people in developing countries with the skills we have as veterinarians. You can really make a difference in many countries."

McDermott shared that message with Guelph colleagues and students last month as keynote speaker at a mini-symposium on international development hosted by the Ontario Veterinary College and as this year's Schofield Memorial Lecturer. OVC established the lecture in 1970 to honour Francis Schofield, a veterinary pathologist who taught at the college from 1921 to 1955.

"It seemed fitting to tie together a speaker of John's stature and international contribution with the fact that he is an OVC graduate," says Prof. Wayne McDonell, assistant dean, research and graduate affairs, for the college.

Growing up in Stouffville, McDermott initially planned to become a large-animal veterinarian somewhere in rural Ontario. It was while studying at Guelph that he found windows opening on international development.

"When I was a student, I became interested in infections, disease and population medicine, rather than the clinical aspects."

After completing his DVM in 1981, he worked for a farm service clinic before heading off to Sudan on a two-year research contract funded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He began post-graduate work in 1984, earning an MPVM from the University of California, Davis, in 1985 and a PhD from Guelph in 1990. That same year, he was appointed a faculty member in OVC.

McDermott studies infectious diseases, mostly vector-borne afflictions such as sleeping sickness. He also studies the delivery of animal health services such as vaccination programs in developing countries.

He says his administrative appointment this spring gives him a broader view of the ILRI and its research programs on three continents. "I want to ensure research is targeted toward development outcomes."

With a budget of $28 million US and a staff of about 70 scientists and several hundred research assistants, the institute is based in Nairobi and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the ILRI also has offices in other African countries as well as the Philippines, China, India and Colombia.

Acknowledging that Africa particularly needs help with stark human health problems, especially HIV/AIDS, McDermott says it's also important to deal with daily survival issues in rural communities, home to three out of four Africans. The ILRI has helped highlight how important livestock is for livelihoods of the poor, he says.

One ILRI effort, for example, is focused on developing a new vaccine against East Coast fever, a parasite-borne cattle disease that costs African farmers more than $170 million US a year in direct losses. The ILRI has sought out private-sector partners to speed up development of the vaccine, which McDermott expects will be available in about five years. "That's a lot faster than it used to be."

During the OVC mini-symposium on international development last month, several students discussing their own African research projects mentioned their ties to McDermott, either as their supervisor or adviser or as a contact for that part of the world. His students have examined everything from helping communities assess and manage natural resources to control of tsetse flies in efforts to prevent sleeping sickness in Uganda.

Prof. Andrew Peregrine, Pathobiology, says he routinely suggests that Guelph students aiming to work in East Africa put a conversation with McDermott on their "must do" list. Peregrine, who himself worked as a scientist at the predecessor institute to the ILRI, recalls that McDermott played a key role at the University of Nairobi in establishing a veterinary epidemiology teaching and research program while on faculty there before joining the ILRI.

"It showed the benefits of in-country training," says Peregrine. "They were training Kenyans in Kenya, with research projects in Kenya."

Brigid McDermott, who studied agriculture and mathematics and statistics at Guelph, has worked with her husband and the institute on various projects. Currently, she is a statistician at the University of Nairobi.