cmdtla.org - Saúde Tropical

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The original objectives of this area are:

I) Technical and scientific capacity building in endemic areas; including the development and/or support of research structures and human resources, as well as training programs;

II) Services to community and civil society; including support to the research groups for quality control and standardization of laboratory techniques, development of products / processes for prophylactic, diagnostic or therapeutics, counselling in infection and epidemiological surveillance, health systems etc.

III) Support to Prevention & Control programs, both a national level (health education, adolescent and school behaviour studies, HIV studies) and with southern partners (health systems, endemic diseases)

IV) Scientific dissemination of information, including web-based information, a documents’ archive and participation in Ciência Viva and ABACO programs of the FCT

Major Achievements:

CMDT has now two working field-stations, in Angola and Mozambique. In Angola, we established a partnership with the support of the Ministry of Health and its Endemic Diseases Department and involving the National Paediatrics Hospital, National Institute of Health, Institute for Control of Trypanosomiasis and Faculty of Medicine. Cross-link activity with local and international NGO’s and international organizations (WHO, CDC) is permanent. In Mozambique, CMDT established a formal office at the Faculty of Medicine in Maputo, with a local Researcher as representative. This partnership involves the Ministry of Health, National Public Health Institute, Veterinary Faculty and Biotechnology Research Centre. In both cases, extensive capacity building actions took place, both rehabilitating local structures and offering training programs to local human resources. Please see Advanced Training section for more details and/or consult http://cmdt.org.

Services to community and civil society actions area are documented in each research group’s area, reflecting the scientific interaction of CMDT members. The constitutive units of CMDT continue to offer and are national reference in clinical and laboratory practice in their field of expertise. An outpatient clinic, offering medical consultation and diagnostics to the public, was maintained. Corporate and government consultancy in those areas are an almost permanent solicitation, including counselling in infection and epidemiological surveillance, health systems etc

Support to prevention & control programs has been a continuous effort of the Centre. This has been the case at national level (emerging diseases, health education, adolescent and school behaviour studies, sexually transmitted infections) and with southern partners (health systems, endemic diseases, epidemiological surveillance programs in S. Tomé, Angola, Cabo Verde and Mozambique)

Scientific dissemination was maintained through the creation of a web portal (http://cmdtla.org) a bibliographic repository of scientific papers and documents (http://cmdtpt.ihmt.unl.pt ; funded by CPLP) and continuous participation in Ciência Viva’s programs, including African students participation.

Future prospects

Our future plans in Cooperation for Development thematic area can be summarized as follows:

1. Development of permanent tools of interaction with civil society, based in Ciência Viva model, defining secondary school’s population as a special target of science information dissemination and building on previous experiences with selected model-schools.

2. Integration / Creation of equipment and information-sharing networks, either resulting from specific FCT programs, or based upon CMDT’s research networks [please se “networking” thematic area and http://www.cmdtla.org]

3. Consolidation of home and field stations, including re-equipment of laboratory and clinical premises at IHMT and special collaborative field stations in Angola and Mozambique.

4. Consolidation of institutional and governmental positions, mainly through an internal policy of collaboration in governmental programs and university strategic integration.

5. Consolidation of the knowledge web-platforms as the main dissemination tool, with emphasis on scientific repository in tropical health and a permanent flux of scientific information.

6. Full development of permanent field stations in Africa