THRU Zim was a hub for the Wellcome Trust Bloomsbury Centre for Global Health Research Scientific Meeting last month, along with the MRC Unit The Gambia. The innovative two-hub hybrid model allowed people to travel or attend online, reducing our carbon footprint whilst facilitating opportunities for in-person networking. In Harare, we welcomed over 50 in person attendees from Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda, the UK and Zambia for the three-day meeting; whilst over 100 people participated in the meeting overall.
The meeting was organised to showcase Wellcome Trust-funded research, particularly the Fellows in the Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD programme in Global Health Research and other early-career researchers. The quality and range of research presented was remarkable – ranging from the “Big Three” of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, to Neglected Tropical Diseases, multimorbidity and the impacts of climate change on health. After several years of meeting online, this was a fantastic opportunity to catch-up with colleagues and develop new projects and collaborations. Our visitors also had the opportunity to visit some of our study sites, including those for ERASE-TB, Vitality and Fractures-E3, as well as a tour of our laboratory facilities at the Biomedical Research and Training Institute (BRTI) and the Zvitambo Institute for Maternal and Child Health Research.
During the meeting, Professor Rashida Ferrand formally announced the new Africa Health Research Training programme (CREATE programme) a new Wellcome-Trust funded PhD scheme which is the latest iteration of a number of training programmes supported by the Centre over 20 years. The new programme will support 25 UK healthcare professionals and recruit a paired cohort of 25 Fellows at the African Partner institutions to create a unique integrated cohort of UK and African Fellows and provide outstanding training opportunities.
Comments