Dr. Katinka De Balogh is on the board of directors with Veterinarians Without Borders North America/Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Amérique du Nord Canada.
Dr. Katinka de Balogh studied veterinary medicine in Berlin and Munich and obtained her doctorate in tropical parasitology from the Tropical Institute of the University of Munich in 1984. She specialized in tropical animal production and health in France and in Veterinary Public Health (VPH) in the Netherlands.
After a short career as a zoo veterinarian at the Rotterdam Zoo, she moved to Africa where she worked for a total of 9 years as a district veterinary officer (DVO) in rural Zambia and lecturer at the veterinary faculties of Lusaka (Zambia) and Maputo (Mozambique). In between, she worked for 2 years as an Associate Professional Officer at World Health Organization in Geneva.
In 1997, she started to work as a lecturer in VPH and international coordinator at the veterinary faculty in Utrecht, the Netherlands. From 2002 to 2016, she worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy where she held various positions from Pro-poor livestock policy to Crisis Management Centre-rapid response coordinator to leading the VPH activities of the organization.
She has always been a strong advocate for One Health and has established close linkages with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) especially during her position at the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific located in Bangkok, Thailand. Since January 2021, she is the Senior Animal health and Production Officer at the FAO Investment Centre in Rome where she is also the focal point for One Health. Katinka has travelled to over 120 countries and is fluent in 7 modern languages.
Register now for our World Rabies Day 2026 webinar, bringing together perspectives from Alaska, Ukraine, and Laos to explore why rabies persists despite being preventable — and what stronger access, local capacity, coordination, and resilient animal and human health systems can contribute to progress toward ending human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030.
#VETSVolunteerVoices brings you stories of our passionate VETS program volunteers from the field. Meet Dr. Joseph Ansong-Danquah, a Ghanaian-Canadian veterinarian who has volunteered with VWB in Ghana since 2017. In 2026, Joseph is completing his final VETS placement after nine years of supporting farmers, communities, partner organizations and fellow volunteers across the country.
In this edition of Ask an Expert, we spoke with Hannah (Tsai-Ping) Liao, whose MSc research at the University of Guelph examined what decades of Community Animal Health Worker (CAHW) programs can teach us about building sustainable, community-led animal health systems in northern Canada.
