International Course on Dengue and other Arboviruses kicks off in Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 20 (ACN) The 18th International Course on Dengue and other Arboviruses began this Monday at the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) with the purpose of training health personnel on the prevention and control of communicable diseases.

The event is being attended by 12 experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to provide advice on the management of arboviral outbreaks, and health officials from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, the United States, Paraguay and Cuba.

At the inauguration, Dr. José Ángel Portal Miranda, Cuba´s Minister of Public Health, told those present that in view of the increase in febrile syndromes in Latin America and the Caribbean, it is necessary to strengthen capacities to predict and identify communicable diseases and reduce their social and economic impact.
He highlighted the work of the IPK, a center of national reference and international scope, made up of competent personnel with high performance in diagnosis, medical care, teaching and research related to the prevention, control and elimination of communicable diseases.

Guadalupe Guzmán, founder of the IPK, said that the 17 previous editions of the course have enabled the training of 3,485 participants from 81 countries in the updating of the main results in the field of epidemiology.

Through conferences, symposiums and workshops, the course will update on the current epidemic situation of the presence of dengue, zika, chicungunya and oropouche in the region, advances and challenges in the clinical management of cases and differential diagnosis, said the virologist.

The meeting will have a practical space, where participants will deepen in the molecular diagnosis of arbovirosis, application of bioinformatics, medical attention to patients, vector control and entomo-virological follow-up, said Guzman.

The International Course on Dengue and other Arbovirosis will run until August 30 and is also organized by the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center for the Study of Dengue and its Control, the Cuban Society of Microbiology and Parasitology, the Ministry of Public Health of the Republic of Cuba, the WHO and PAHO.
According to PAHO, there are more than 11 million suspected cases of dengue fever this year, with more than five million confirmed cases of this arbovirosis, the most common in the region