University of São Paulo: USP online classes explain historical and current view of major endemic diseases
Between August and December, USP’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB) holds a new edition of the Grandes Endemia s discipline , a course that brings together specialists from the most diverse areas to discuss topics of extreme relevance to public health, such as covid-19, monkeypox and influenza.
Held since 2015, the course is an optional subject for the undergraduate Biomedical Sciences and postgraduate programs at the institute. The lectures take place in person, but are simultaneously broadcast on the ICB’s YouTube channel . “On YouTube, classes are open and free, everyone is welcome. They are also recorded for later consultations”, says Alejandro M. Katzin, one of the course coordinators and professor at the Department of Parasitology. Katzin shares the coordination with professors Lourdes Isaac, from the Department of Immunology; Rita de Cássia Café Ferreira and Carlos Taborda, both from the Department of Microbiology.
“It is a discipline that may interest not only students in the health area, so we seek to disseminate the content beyond the University, with the most accessible language possible”, adds the professor.
The course, which began on August 18 with the lecture State of the Art of Infectious Diseases in Brazil , given by Professor Marcos Boulos, from the Faculty of Medicine (FM) at USP, is divided into 16 classes. Each class has an average duration of three hours, totaling a workload of 60 hours.
Schedule
In the classes, guests will talk about the origin, forms of transmission, control measures, new treatment alternatives, in addition to the social and economic aspects related to the main endemics (infectious diseases that usually manifest in a region).
In addition to the diseases of greatest concern at the moment, a special focus will be given to neglected diseases, a group that includes tuberculosis, syphilis and arboviruses (dengue, zika, yellow fever and chikungunya).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), neglected diseases are those that often do not arouse the interest of the pharmaceutical industry in developing effective vaccines and treatments, as they affect populations with few financial resources.