On May 26th and 27th, Unicamp held another edition of the Permanent Forums, with the theme “Challenges in Global Health and Innovative Solutions”. At the meeting, the application of interdisciplinary knowledge and practices and the importance of partnerships to guarantee the health of the world's population were discussed, respecting the particularities and resolving imbalances in different regions of the globe. The event was an initiative of the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) and the Institute of Biology (IB) at Unicamp. The Permanent Forums are held by the Dean of Extension and Culture (Proec).
Present at the opening session were Maria Luiza Moretti (general coordinator of Unicamp), Mariangela Resende (professor at FCM and member of the organization), João Marcos Romano (pro-rector of Research), Fernando Coelho (pro-rector of Extension and Culture ), Marcelo Mori (IB professor and coordinator of the Unicamp Global Health Hub), Lair Zambon (Campinas Health Secretary), Luiz Eugênio Mello (fapesp scientific director) and Sérgio Estani (regional executive director of the Medicines for Diseases initiative Neglected - DNDi).
Guests discussed the need for different professionals, specialties and institutions to join forces to promote global health. Unicamp's Global Health Hub, launched at the opening of the Forum, was created for this purpose. "Our goal is to integrate knowledge at the University and use our expertise and structure to think about solutions for society", explains Marcelo Mori, coordinator of the Hub.
The group draws on experiences during the pandemic, a period in which the University established a Task Force against Covid-19 to face both health problems and other challenges resulting from the health emergency. "At that moment, we had to give an immediate response to the community. And the university came together to face the challenge. The Global Health Hub intends to verify the community's problems and respond to them by bringing together different knowledge", comments Maria Luiza Moretti.
This proposal depends on a broad view of health, taking into account factors that go beyond strictly medical issues. “With the pandemic, the fragility of global health became clear, not only in the face of the threat of the disease, but also in relation to the difficulty of providing inputs to face it and the worsening of inequalities on the planet”, analyzes Fernando Coelho.
Climate change, inequities and diplomacy
The theme of the opening table was “Global Health Challenges”, with reflections on the importance of health diplomacy, based on articulations between governments and international organizations; the impacts of climate change on health and the potential of climatological data to assist in health planning; and the benefits of a systemic vision in collective health.
Master and PhD in Clinical Medicine from Unicamp, Alexandre de Macedo Oliveira, senior epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta (USA), argued that innovation in health must go beyond technological thinking. It must also cover relationships between professionals and institutions. Hence the need for health diplomacy.
The epidemiologist gave examples of CDC projects in partnership with governments and global institutions, such as efficacy studies on malaria treatment carried out in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In each region, the actions met emerging demands. “"While in the Americas the focus was on the creation, transfer of technology and collection of information for decision-making, in Africa and Asia, half of the funds were allocated to the purchase and distribution of inputs", he details.
Health diplomacy requires collaboration between governments and organizations in order to strengthen their institutional capacity and expand long-term financing opportunities. A future partnership between CDC and the Global Health Hub would meet these demands. “Global health is not made by a government. Effective programs to respond to epidemics, such as Ebola and Zika, require the coordination of different partners.”
The concept of One Health (One Health) was approached by Anna Stewart Ibarra, scientific director of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. It concerns harmony between the health of humans, animals and the environment, for the benefit of all. The perspective helps to identify the influence of environmental factors on public health, as in the case of dengue transmission in South America. In this case, climate information can be useful in planning health programs.
"The health sector uses climate services little. Institutional barriers reduce their implementation", he argues. She also points out the need for humanistic knowledge in order to investigate social problems. "If we do not include the most vulnerable populations, it is unlikely that we will be able to take effective measures to reduce health risks."
Finally, Silvia Santiago discussed human and social factors, such as work relations, housing conditions and income distribution, which produce health inequities. Executive Director of Human Rights at Unicamp, she points out that these factors are not natural, such as age and gender differences, but are the result of injustice. “Inequities could be reduced with combined government policies,” she says.
She defended the application of Social Determinants of Health (DSS) in the formulation of effective public policies. They require efforts on several fronts, as in the case of the Unicamp Task Force's actions in the outskirts during the pandemic. For example, in Vila Soma, in Sumaré, the distribution of food to families in vulnerable situations, combined with testing the population, helped people have the economic conditions to maintain social distancing, reducing the impacts of Covid-19. "The pandemic not only revealed inequalities, it also produced and continues to produce them in a glaring way, in health outcomes between population groups."
