Our partners from APMVEAC, Filipe Gonçalves and Lisa Mestrinho, recently gave an interview for Veterinária Atual, sharing their work within the PLANET4HEALTH project.
Veterinária Atual is a Portuguese monthly information magazine and digital platform tailored for veterinary medicine professionals. It focuses on providing diversified technical content, industry trends, and best practices, featuring clinical studies, podcasts, and management insights for animal health professionals.
The interview highlights how APMVEAC is using ten years of epidemiological data from dogs diagnosed with Leishmaniose, combined with environmental factors, to develop tools that monitor vector activity and support evidence-based decision-making.
Read the full interview in Portuguese.
Highlights from the interview:
The PLANET4HEALTHproject is a European initiative addressing the impact of vector-borne diseases, environmental pollution, and climate change on health through a multisectoral approach.
In Portugal, APMVEAC is collecting crucial epidemiological data from dogs diagnosed with Leishmaniose over the past ten years, including information on age, breed, sex, and geographic location.
According to Filipe Gonçalves and Lisa Mestrinho, this data will be combined with environmental factors, such as wind speed, soil humidity, and sandfly movement and density, to develop a digital tool capable of monitoring vector activity throughout the year. This platform will help veterinarians identify areas with higher recent activity and better assess the risk of exposure.
The sand fly activity surveillance maps produced by Planet4Health will also be a key tool for policymakers, enabling informed mitigation decisions based on real data.
Overall, PLANET4HEALTH follows a One Health approach, strengthening the connection between animal, environmental, and public health to improve disease prevention.
We would like to thank Veterinária Atual for featuring this interview and highlighting the work of APMVEAC and the PLANET4HEALTH project.