Experience exchange between Italy and Cuba
Pedro Kourì Institute 13-17 February
After the meeting of May 2009 on the AIDS emergency, where the health care models of the two countries were compared, the experience exchange between Italy and Cuba continued in La Habana, from 13 to 17 February 2010, involving the NIHMP of Rome and the Pedro Kouri Institute (IPK) of Cuba.
Prof. Aldo Morrone, NIHMP Director General, and Dr Miriam Castaldo, anthropologist at NIHMP, visited a number of important health care centres in Cuba, such as the Pedro Kourí Tropical Medicine Institute, the Finlay Institute (vaccines production centre), the Centre of Molecular Immunology, the Centre for the assistance of HIV/AIDS-infected people in Santiago de Las Vegas and the Dermatological Hospital Del Rincón. They also worked for the future collaboration between the NIHMP and the Kourì Institute.
Cuba has a long tradition of control of infectious diseases and today the so-called tropical diseases are no longer considered a major health problem in the Country. On the occasion of the Congress organised in La Habana for the 70th anniversary of the Pedro Kourí Tropical Medicine Institute (IPK), where almost 400 people from 25 different countries participated, the Director of the Institute, Dr Gustavo Kourí, highlighted that from 1882 to 1947, cholera, yellow fever, bubonic plague, smallpox and filariasis have been eradicated. Nevertheless, the prevention of antibiotic resistance, severe respiratory inflammations, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted disease remain among the health priorities of the country.
Italy represents a natural bridge between the North and the South of the world, and between Eastern and Western Europe. It used to be an emigration land and today, as well as many European countries, has to face the problems deriving from a huge immigration flow; above all, the control of emerging and re-emerging diseases.
The different settings of the two Institutes create the basis for an interesting information and good practice exchange between a tropical country where tropical diseases were successfully eradicated and a developed country that is facing the same challenge by adopting new multidisciplinary approaches.
The objective of the collaboration between the Pedro Kourí and the NIHMP is to enhance the capacity of both Institutes to manage and understand tropical diseases, especially dermatological and infectious disorders, and to improve intervention standards by providing more effective health care services specialised in tropical medicine and public health.