UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS –UNOOSA
RESEARCH, APPLICATION AND TRAINING NETWORK ON SPACE TECHNOLOGY APPLIED TO
HUMAN HEALTH – TELE-EPIDEMIOLOGY PANAMERICAN GROUP
UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA - SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO IN SCIENZE
BIOMEDICHE TRASLAZIONALI
SATELLITE-BASED APPLICATIONS TO TELE-MEDICINE and HUMAN HEALTH
APPLICAZIONE DELLA TECNOLOGIA SATELLITARE ALLA TELE-MEDICINA e
ALLA SALUTE
Tavola rotonda con la partecipazione di:
Viktor Kotelnikov (Scientific Affairs Officer, United Nations)
Marcelo Scavuzzo (Instituto Mario Gulich, Argentina)
Graciela Russomando (Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Salud -Universidad de Asunción, Paraguay)
S. K. Mishra (SGPGI Telemedicine Program Sanjay Gandhi PG Inst. of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India)
Pascal Michel (Épidemiologie des Zoonoses et Santé Publique, Agence de la Santé Publique du Canada )
Laura Delgado, Santiago Ramos (Universidad de Caracas, Venezuela)
M.M. Lleo (Dipartimento di Patologia, Sezione di Microbiologia, Università di Verona)
10 Settembre ore 9.00 Aula 1 Lente Didattica, Ospedale Policlinico di Verona
La tavola rotonda viene organizzata nel contesto del 6th European Congress on Tropical Medicine and
International Health che si terrà a Verona dal 6 al 10 Settembre 2009
From 6 to 10 September 2009 the European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health
will be hosted in Verona, Italy. Besides dealing with the classical aspects of Tropical Medicine including
basic science, diagnostic/therapeutics and disease control, the congress will focus on Equity, Human Rights
and Access to Care and on strategies to reduce inequality, to broaden the access to basic health services and
to reach the underserved. The Congress will also put a great emphasis on Transferability of Research
results into actual practice and how evidence obtained from research is transferred/not transferred
into actual policy and practice. Among the numerous thematic, the Congress will afford key questions
concerning human health such as the need of implementing global initiatives for the health related
millennium development goals, the elimination of barriers to access to quality care, the new insights in the
knowledge, management and eradication of tropical diseases such as malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, the key
aspects regarding disease treatment and prevention like bacterial resistance and vaccine development and the
confrontation of the scientific community to new global threats such as avian flu or bioterrorism.
On this context, UNOOSA, The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, organizes a
Symposium on Space technology contribution to infection surveillance and to the Health-related MDG
goals aims to offer, to all the health professionals, information and debating on the contribution that space
technologies can provide to Human Health applications and particularly in the recently explored fields of
Tele-Medicine and Tele-Epidemiology.
Satellite technology provides large coverage communication and environment monitoring also in isolated,
remote areas thus facilitating an equal access to basic health services and de facto contributing to the
bridging of the digital divide.
The participation, to the European Congress, of experts from all the parts of the world on Tele-epidemiology
involved in satellite–based applications to human health will include, in addition to the mentioned UNOOSA
Symposium, a dedicated poster session and a Round Table to be held at the Faculty of Medicine of the
University of Verona for a confrontation with clinicians, medical doctors and under-graduate and PhD
students.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is the United Nations office responsible
for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. Through the United Nations
Programme on Space Applications, UNOOSA conducts international workshops, training courses and pilot
projects on topics that include remote sensing, satellite navigation, satellite meteorology, tele-education and
basic space sciences for the benefit of developing nations. It also maintains a 24-hour hotline as the United
Nations focal point for satellite imagery requests during disasters and manages the United Nations Platform
for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER).
The “Research, Application and Training Network on Space Technology applied to Human Health -Tele-epidemiology Panamerican group” was set up in September 2005 and it arose as a need to develop
collaborative research and training performed by Latin American, European and USA scientists.
These collaborative efforts are expected to led to the establishment of links among scientists of these
countries, resulting in collaboration for research, application and training connected to Public Health
problems endemic in the Region. The formal integration of the Network include training options to students
and professionals considering the expertise of some groups, already in the Network, in space technologies
and epidemiology such as space information, cartography, Landscape Epidemiology, remote sensing,
climatic information and geo-statistic. A number of projects developed by these groups utilizes methods such
as those used in Epidemiological Surveillance which are of great relevance to developing countries thus
increasing the general usefulness of the Network activities.
The mandatory educational goal of the Doctorate School in Translational Biomedical Sciences is the
concept of Translational: the capability of transferring in a rapid way the new knowledge of basic sciences to
biomedicine in order to generate advanced diagnostic and therapeutic applications and new research tools.
From the practical point of view, the Doctorate School has three major objectives: i) development of a
cultural and experimental continuum from basic to applied research, ii) formation of PhD doctors prepared to
afford future technologic challenges and the increasing need of a “productive” research, iii) the educational
and professional preparation to the clinical medicine, sanitation, forensic sciences and the industrial aspects
of the biomedical field. The knowledge areas included in the Doctorate School are structured in
interconnected lines of teaching and research and deal with biotechnology, molecular and cellular biology,
pathology and pharmacology, translational immunology and basic and applied microbiology.