David Patrick, SPPH Director, and Vladimir Molochniy, Rector of FESMU sign agreement as (l to r) Natalie Prystajecky, BCCDC; Svetlana Kishchenko, SPPH; Nikolay Toshkinov, VR for International Affairs; and Nikolay Alecsaeev, Director of Institute for Public Health, look on.
UBC’s School of Population and Public Health has signed a five-year innovative international partnership agreement with Russia’s Far Eastern State Medical University (FESMU).
Dr. David Patrick, Director, School of Population and Public Health, signed the agreement along with Russian counterpart Vladimir Molochniy, Rector of FESMU in Khabarovsk, Russia.
Dr. David Patrick is very optimistic about the new agreement. “Just over a hundred years ago, Khabarovsk and Vancouver were both frontier towns on the far edges of Russia and Canada. We still share that sense of newness and discovery and are directing it toward health,” he said.
The cooperation agreement opens the door for shared learning between the institutions including the exchange of faculty and researchers, sharing of scholarly resources and organizing joint conferences.
The agreement was signed during an infectious disease conference held in Russia. “On this recent trip, we determined that we should combine the strong virology and clinical work at FESMU with our focus on environmental and genomic epidemiology at UBC to seek solutions to recurrent summer epidemics of enteroviral meningitis near the Amur river,” said Dr. Patrick.
SPPH Clinical Assistant Professor Dr. Svetlana Kishchenko also presented at the conference and expressed great hope and confidence in the partnership. “I truly believe in a positive role of global public health and medical diplomacy in supporting leadership development in public health and medical professions. The assistance provided by SPPH and BCCDC team will help to implement molecular methods of typing and increase local laboratories capacity and participation for more complete and accurate surveillance for enteroviruses in the Russian Far East.”
by Bryan Nordley