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The authors propose reviewing the current needs for implementing veterinary public health programmes, from both the teaching and professional standpoints. This is warranted by the fact that veterinary public health has become extremely important in various fields of work, beyond conventional food inspection. The article discusses the public health role which veterinarians must play and the interactions between their activities and those of other groups such as doctors, epidemiologists, ecologists, chemists, or even sociologists and anthropologists. The authors also study and assess the basic working tool in veterinary public health--epidemiological surveillance--and how it operates on the basis of diagnosis and risk analysis. The second part of the article discusses the need to unify criteria for veterinary public health training and the role which the SAPUVET network is playing in doing so (SAPUVET is a European Union-supported project within the ALFA programme that is designed to establish links between Latin American and European veterinary faculties).