Olanike Adeyemo Quotes

There are different ways of transmitting diseases. I headed the Oyo State Decontamination and Containment Team of the COVID-19 task force. I know that there are so many factors causing the transmission of diseases from animals to humans and one of them is urbanisation. We cut down trees and move into the bushes and we come in more contact with animals. Ecotourism is another factor. Human beings don’t respect boundaries.

I trained as a veterinarian but I have evolved, although I still offer services at the teaching hospital as an aquatic veterinarian. In Veterinary Medicine we also have disciplines. For research, I teach at the Department of Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine and I research what we call “one health.” Like every other thing, research evolves, and so I parted with environmental health because that was what I did my PhD on.

Whatever we push into the environment eventually comes back to us because we are higher animals but it takes longer for those effects to manifest in us because of our body mass and all that.

I looked at the impact of lead in fuel and at that time, other countries had banned lead in petrol but we were still using it and I wanted to look at the impact of that on the environment. When you emit all these into the atmosphere and it rains, it runs into rivers and most of our pollutants go into rivers. I looked at the lead level in rivers in Ibadan. I looked at the impact on fish and I was able to see that what goes round comes round.

Women are also confronted with challenges common to all researchers. These include poor infrastructure, access to cutting-edge research tools and funding to carry out research. Additionally, early career female researchers don’t have many female role models for motivation and mentorship.

I don’t think we have enough. We don’t. In my area now, we don’t have enough. Veterinarians work in many areas and they are also in charge of ensuring that what we eat is safe aside from those who work on poultry farms and those that treat dogs and all that. We don’t have enough as I said. Even though we don’t have enough to cover our abattoirs, it is better now than when I was an undergraduate. The system does not even retain the ones we have. What used to happen back then was if you went into Vet Medicine, you would not be allowed to change your course even if you wanted to change. But now, we no longer want people that are there grudgingly.

I tell the younger ones now that they can be whatever they want to be and it is easier now to navigate. What you do may be different from your calling and you can only excel in the area where your passion is. I also always tell people not to force their children into any profession. Forcing children into professions we want is why we have so many doctors that are not empathetic. They are just there for the name and the money. That is why you go to hospitals and find doctors or nurses that are so mean to patients. But people who have passion for it do it with joy and they show empathy, make sacrifices, and don’t feel it as such. And nobody can excel in any profession they don’t have passion for. I found myself in Veterinary Medicine but I have evolved and I have a passion for it.

I tell the younger ones now that they can be whatever they want to be and it is easier now to navigate.

It is in every profession. If you do something grudgingly, you are not likely to put in your best. So, I will advise people not to do any job grudgingly. The Managing Director of First Bank, Sola Adeduntan, is my friend. He was a year ahead of me at vet school. He is a veterinarian and there is another one at Stanbic IBTC, who graduated from Agronomy Department here at UI. It is better for you to find your way to your place of passion than to stay grudgingly in a profession.

Let me give you a quick example. Have you wondered why there is an upsurge in cases of kidney failure? Between 15 and 20 years ago, it was not this bad. But when you look at celebrities now, you will discover that kidney problems have increased. The celebrities are the ones we know. There are many unknown individuals who are down or have died as a result of kidney failure. And when you look at it, it is being caused by what we eat or what we are being exposed to. It is difficult to ascribe a cause to this illness because some of those things take years unlike when you shoot somebody and you see on the spot that the bullet is responsible for the person’s death. If somebody has hepatitis now, the person won’t have liver cancer the same day. It will take a while before it manifests. You are aware that there was a time when it was said that some people used detergent to ferment fufu. That kind of thing will not kill somebody in a day.

I didn’t choose Vet Medicine. You know how it is with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and during my time, there were few professions parents wanted their children to go into. Parents wanted their children to become lawyers, doctors, and engineers during my time. If you were good at science subjects, they wanted you to become a doctor. When I took the University Matriculation Examination (now Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination), my parents chose Medicine but I did not meet the cutoff mark. I later changed my choice of course of study. One of my dad’s friends, a professor of Veterinary Medicine, said he would have loved me to study Vet Medicine but he said it was too tough that I would not be able to cope. But that was a challenge to me and because he said I would not be able to cope, I said that was what I wanted and that was how I ended up in Veterinary Medicine.

Veterinary medicine has an increasingly important role to play in addressing the global challenges of the 21st century based on our societal contributions to Animal Welfare, Biomedical Research, Animal Health, Production, and Conservation of Species, as well as Safeguarding the Health of Humans. Worldwide the profession is facing challenges in maintaining the economic sustainability of veterinary education and practice, evolving veterinary service to meet changing societal needs; in addition, the populace, policymakers, and even medical professionals are frequently unaware of how veterinary medicine fundamentally supports both animal and human health.

If you come in there now and you say you want to change your course, we will allow you to go. We will rather have those who are genuinely interested than having a crowd of students who are there grudgingly. We have many veterinarians that are doing many other things in other areas now. But there are many areas, including disease prevention, where veterinarians work as I said earlier.

In some developed countries, some people keep exotic pets and among several ways is bestiality which can bring sexual transmission of diseases. For instance, many people don’t know that a pregnant woman should not be in contact with cats because cats transmit a disease that causes abortion.

Women in science do seem to find it difficult to be recognised and achieve academic excellence. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, due to cultural limitations and bias. Within the Nigerian environment marriage, parenthood and other gender-assigned roles – such as primary caregivers for the elderly – take precedence over career and education.