Ian Beveridge Memorial Lecture
Veterinarian and epidemiologist Professor Jackie Benschop presents our second Ian Beveridge Memorial Lecture for 2024. Jackie will explore the challenges of leptospirosis and the transdisciplinary approach needed for best management.
Leptospirosis: A global disease yet a local phenomenon
Leptospirosis causes 50,000 human deaths per year worldwide. In domestic animals leptospirosis can cause death, abortion and loss of production. Infection occurs by contact with infected animals’ urine or indirectly by contaminated water.
In Aotearoa, New Zealand, leptospirosis is an acute febrile disease with long recovery. Control measures including animal vaccination and the use of personal protective equipment are well entrenched in some industries but are not available to all at risk. Leptospirosis can be challenging to diagnose due to adherence to “gold standard” tests, and leptospira can be difficult to detect in animals and environments due to intermittent shedding and dilution, respectively.
Leptospirosis is complex, increasing with changing climate, and has long-lasting effects on social, financial and overall wellbeing. Thus, a transdisciplinary approach is needed, listening to and working with other academic disciplines and with non-academic stakeholders.
At the end of the talk, there will be a Q&A followed by a cocktail reception.
Professor Jackie Benschop
About the speaker
Professor Jackie Benschop is a veterinarian who worked in clinical practice and in the meat industry in New Zealand and the UK for 15 years before returning to university in 2004. She co-directs the Molecular Epidemiology and Public Health Laboratory at Tāwharau Ora, the School of Veterinary Science, Massey University.
Her interests include ethics, working at interfaces and One Health in its broadest sense including equity, diversity and communication. Jackie’s work focuses on leptospirosis, a climate-sensitive disease that disproportionately burdens rural and Māori communities in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Past lectures
- Watch a video of the 2023 lecture - Dr Alison Peel
- Watch a video of the 2022 lecture - Dr Barbara Brito Rodriguez
- Watch a video of the 2019 lecture - Professor Ruth Zadoks
- Watch a video of the 2018 lecture - Professor Nigel French
- Watch a video of the 2017 lecture - Professor Michael Lairmore
- Watch a video of the 2016 lecture - Dr Siobhan Mor
- Watch a video of the 2015 lecture - Professor Jonathan Rushton
- Watch a video of the 2014 lecture - Professor Edward Breitschwerdt
Emeritus Professor William Ian Beveridge
About Ian Beveridge
This memorial lecture commemorates the work of Ian Beveridge, whose pioneering work in the area of 'one medicine' foresaw an entirely new kind of interdisciplinary research.
Emeritus Professor William Ian Beveridge was an alumnus of the University of Sydney, graduating in 1931. He began his research career at McMaster Laboratory, CSIR, shortly afterwards supervised by Professor R H Carne.
Remarkably, within a few years he had found the bacterium responsible for footrot of sheep and set the principles for its control and eradication. He was later awarded a DVSc for this research.
During World War II he worked on influenza and other diseases at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne. In 1947 he became Professor of Animal Pathology at Cambridge and there, and later in the WHO, developed and promoted the concept of 'comparative (one) medicine'.
In 1972 Professor Beveridge published a book, Frontiers in Comparative Medicine, outlining his views in this area of 'one medicine'.