Wreathed in barbecue smoke, Vetjaera Haakuria gestures at the men butchering meat and cooking it over hot coals behind his back. “What have you learned about the risks of eating this?” he asks his young audience, spotless in their white lab coats. “It might contain drug residues, right? And what about diseases?”
It’s nearly noon in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, and the market is preparing grilled meat – known locally as kapana – for the lunchtime rush. Everyone comes here, from construction workers to members of parliament. Namibians love to eat meat, and he is no exception: his tribe, the Herero, traditionally eat nothing else.
But regulation is patchy and the meat being sold at this market could contain anything from antibiotics to parasites, Haakuria says. Diseases that pass from livestock to humans are rife in the country’s rural north.
Animals that die from unknown causes are eaten, no questions asked. Last year more than 50 people were hospitalised in north-western Namibia after contracting anthrax, a deadly disease that had probably entered a goat flock from infected wildlife.
In those areas, people live cheek by jowl with their livestock, Haakuria says. “You go straight from the cattle kraal into the house, where babies crawl around on the floor.”
While most small-scale farmers are able to access basic veterinary drugs such as antibiotics and dewormers over the counter at agri-stores or human pharmacies, few are told how to administer them safely.
That is why Haakuria has brought his second-year pharmacy students from the University of Namibia to this market: to teach them about the interface between human and animal health.
He is the country’s only specialist veterinary pharmacist. But not for long – or so he hopes.
