We began a stable working collaboration with the Carmelo Hospital of Mozambique

The Carmelo Hospital, located in the city of Chókwè, in the province of Gaza, in southern Mozambique, has 135 inpatient and outpatient beds for 9,800 people living with HIV/AIDS, 1,500 with tuberculosis and 2,000 with chronic pathologies. such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and lung disease.

The Hospital is led by Sister María Elisa Verdú (in the photo), a doctor and missionary of the Order of the Daughters of Charity, who has been working in Africa for more than 40 years. In fact, the Carmelo Hospital is within the national health system of Mozambique due to the type of pathologies that are treated, but the community of religious women is in charge of its management.

The embryo of collaboration between institutions

The doctor. Xavier Vallès, doctor at the Germans Trias Hospital and researcher at the Fight Infections Foundation, met Dr. María Elisa Verdú during a professional stay in Mozambique, who expressed to him the need and desire to establish a collaboration between the Carmelo Hospital and a European research institution that could provide them with training and support them in different aspects. Thus, taking advantage of a visit by Dr. Verdú in Barcelona, dr. Vallès put her in contact with dr. Bonaventura Clotet and dr. Roger Paredes, as well as with the Fight Infections Foundation. From there the collaboration proposal was born. Nurse Anna Chamorro from the Foundation’s Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) was prepared to launch the project, but unfortunately the Covid-19 pandemic made it impossible to carry it out.

Stable employment relationship planned for 2024

At that moment dr. Martí Vall, doctor at the Infectious Diseases Service at the Germans Trias Hospital and researcher at the Fight Infections Foundation, is leading a project that aims to promote a stable working relationship with the Carmelo Hospital. The purpose of the collaboration is to create a permanent research infrastructure that allows carrying out research projects in infectious diseases, as well as training the Hospital’s healthcare teams. With this objective, this week Dr. joins the Infectious Diseases Service for two months. Bartolomeu Chongo, graduated in medicine from the Eduardo Mondlane University, with the purpose of learning about the Service and its areas of experience. At the same time, dr. Chongo will take advantage of his stay in Catalonia to train in the implementation of research studies such as those we lead from the Fight Infections Foundation. This stay has been possible thanks to a cooperation scholarship awarded by the Barcelona College of Physicians.

As commented by Dr. Martí Vall the objective of this project is to try to create a stable collaboration structure with an African hospital that cares for a significant number of patients affected by different high-impact infectious diseases. The doctor. Vall, who has worked in Africa on different occasions, highlights that professionals on this continent are motivated and well trained, but they do not have the necessary resources to carry out precise diagnoses as in high-income countries. Anyway, dr. Martí Vall believes that the fact of having to work with fewer resources pushes professionals to approach the patient from a more holistic and less fragmented vision.

This project wants to be an example of collaboration between countries, institutions and committed professionals that serves to obtain positive results in the health of people in low-income countries through research and assistance.