WildLife Group
of the SAVA
Post Mortem
for Insurance in Wildlife
Nick Kriek,
Dept. of Paraclinical Sciences,
Faculty of Veterinary Science,
University of Pretoria
[email protected]
In the absence of a (correct) diagnosis, surgery is trauma,
medicine is poison, and alternative therapy is witchcraft
Kent Allen
Introduction
Because of the growth of the wildlife industry, and
the logarithmic increase in the value of some of the
animals, there is increasing pressure on the insurance
industry to cope with the number and cost of the
claims lodged for compensation of losses.
Accompanying this trend there has also been an
increase in the number of fraudulent claims, and
the inability to deal with claims because of the poor
quality of veterinary reports detailing the cause of
death of a specific animal. Submission of inadequate
veterinary reports may be the cause for declining the
claim, or dismissal of a case if it eventually goes to
court. Within the latter context, insurance companies
are increasingly sending reports submitted by
veterinarians for a second opinion either to veterinary
pathologists, or to medical forensic pathologists to
assess the findings and conclusions.
Given this situation, there is a need for the profession
at large to improve on the quality of the diagnostic
workup, and the compilation of reports, to satisfy the
legal requirements associated with this type of claim.
It is a given that most veterinarians ha