CAPRISA participates in Harvard’s Transmed course
Dr Kogie Naidoo hosted medical students from the Ragon Institute at Harvard and participated in the Transmed course organised by Harvard’s Ragon Institute. As part of scientific capacity building in Africa, three students from South Africa, one from CAPRISA and two from the HPP, and one from Zimbabwe received support from the Ragon Institute to attend the course.
Dr Fillipos Porichis Director of International Programs, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard who led the delegation explained that the main goal of the course ‘was to educate students on how to identify unmet medical needs and how to employ translational solutions’. He said that the visit to the CAPRISA research clinic provided students ‘with a unique opportunity to identify the unmet medical needs of HIV and/or TB infections and through the different talks, the students were able to see firsthand the design, execution and analysis of clinical trials addressing some of the medical needs that were identified’.
The visit and participation at the CAPRISA ECRS was significant as it contributed to the development of the curriculum said Dr Kogie Naidoo. “This course is a great example of collaborative efforts in finding innovative solutions to unmet medical needs that contribute daily to unnecessary suffering and death. I was struck by the interest and motivation in the group in accessing first world technologies to find novel interventions for the scourge of HIV and TB.”