Postgraduate Certificate - Advanced Tropical Medicine and Challenges in International Health
Date limite : 31 juillet 2025 pour le cours de 2025-2026
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Certificat de Postgraduat
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25 crédits ECTS
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English
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Informations générales
This Postgraduate Certificate Programme consists of two short courses:
- Challenges in International Health
- Tropical Medicine and Clinical Decision Making
FOR WHOM?
Are you a physician and are you eager to broaden your horizons in health? Do you want to be better equipped to work in emergencies or with people in vulnerable situations globally? Do you have ambitions for a career in international health at local, national and international organizations? Do want to learn more about tropical medicine? Then this postgraduate certificate programme is for you!
Challenges in International Health:
WHY?
Recent diseases outbreaks such as the Ebola virus and the COVID-19 pandemic, and humanitarian emergencies due to the climate crises have urged health actors globally to recognise the need for improved crisis preparedness and emergency response. Due to demographic transitions, countries are faced with a rise in non-communicable diseases? while the prevention and control of infectious diseases still pose major challenges. Policy makers and governments need to ensure universal access to good quality care for all while paying particular attention to people in vulnerable situations.
Some dichotomies such as local versus global, tropical versus non-tropical, communicable versus non-communicable, imported versus domestic are losing their relevance. International health needs to encompass all these perspectives/dimensions.
These challenges require context-adapted and multidisciplinary responses. Evidence from basic and implementation research will be important to guide decision makers and health workers across the globe.
WHAT?
This 12-week course on “Challenges in International Health” will provide you with a good understanding of the complex picture of health challenges globally in general and in deprived, vulnerable settings in particular. Through case studies from various settings, you will analyse the social, anthropological, political, economic and ecological determinants of health, and address health problems from different perspectives including disease control, health service organisation and health policies. You will gain understanding of the complexity of health challenges and learn how to develop, implement, and evaluate health interventions and formulate communication strategies. The course will give you both the theoretical and practical toolsets you need to advance your career.
HOW?
You will learn from the scientific expertise and field experience of a multidisciplinary teaching team and from your collaboration with a diverse group of fellow students.
“Challenges in International Health” is organised in English in autumn (October-December) and in French in spring (April-June).
Tropical Medicine and Clinical Decision Making: focuses on descriptive pathology, laboratory practices and clinical decision-making adapted to low-resource settings and tropical district hospitals. This specialised clinical course is primarily designed for medical doctors who have no or little professional experience in (low-resource) tropical settings, as well as for clinicians working or planning to work in non-tropical settings with travelers and migrants.
Objectifs d'apprentissage
Upon completion of the course Challenges in International Health, you will be able to:
Specific skills
- Assess the importance and burden of a particular health problem in terms of frequency, severity, inequity, and socio-economic cost, in stable and outbreak settings
- Discuss the different risk factors and determinants (ecological, genetic, social, economic, behavioural, health system-related) of health and well-being of populations, including populations in vulnerable situations (such as migrants, children, adolescents, pregnant women, key populations, … )
- Formulate evidence-based and context-specific health programmes/interventions in stable and crisis contexts with the available resources and the stakeholders' perspectives;
- Define the main public health interventions, with their implementation challenges, to prevent and/or control a health problem with particular attention to screening, surveillance, outbreak investigation, control and elimination, emergency responses, reproductive and child health programmes and using multisectoral approaches
- Assess (local) health systems in terms of access, quality of care, organisation of service delivery, stewardship, and intersectoral interfaces and collaborations
- Critically appraise the crisis preparedness and responsiveness of health systems and health policies to current and emerging challenges
- Discuss the major issues in international/global health policy and the development agenda (SDGs) including the role and agency of health policy actors at all levels
Specific learning outcomes for students taking the course component “Field Laboratory preparedness” (CC4) as alternative for “Health in vulnerable situations”
- Critically assess the set-up of a field laboratory and propose interventions to improve its organization
- Identify priority actions to assure the quality of a laboratory in terms of accuracy, reliability, and timeliness of the results
- Explore research opportunities within a diagnostic laboratory
Generic skills
- Search for information in reliable sources
- Show evidence of a critical and value-based attitude
- Communicate and collaborate in a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural setting
- Work independently
- Develop life-long learning skills
Upon completion of the course Tropical Medicine and International Health, you will be be able to:
- Assess statements about epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis and management (including preventive measures and community interventions) of clinical cases presenting with symptoms of tropical diseases
- Assess statements about clinical presentation, diagnosis and management of clinical cases with an HIV-infection, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases in low resource settings
- Assess statements about clinical presentation, diagnosis and management of common paediatric, dermatological and gynaecological conditions in a tropical setting
- Discuss the performances and pitfalls of laboratory tests in a tropical district hospital and interpret their results within a given clinical context;
- Integrate all domain-specific knowledge (epidemiology, clinical, laboratory) to elaborate a sound differential diagnosis and propose adequate clinical management for clinical cases in a hospital with scarce resources in a tropical setting.
*Courses and programmes can be subject to change.
Programme director(s)
- Ludwig Apers
Programme coördinator(s)
- Deogratias Katsuva
- Grizel Sami Alcedo Ascencios
Programme administrator(s)
- Anne Thoelen
- Gerlinde Segers
- Cathy Liu
Contact
- tmih@itg.be