From April 27th to 28th, Professor Sue Welburn, Executive Dean of Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh (ZJE), was invited to Haikou City to attend the 5th Forum for Tropical Medicine, Belt and Road Tropical Medical Alliance and give an opening keynote speech. The key word of this conference is "One Health and Tropical Diseases", which aims to comprehensively and deeply discuss issues such as infectious diseases, tropical disease prevention and control, and global health governance.
As the first keynote reporter of the conference, Prof. Welburn shared her more than 30 years of scientific research experience and perception in the field of medical and veterinary molecular epidemiology with the participants at home and abroad under the title "One Health: the 21st Century Challenge". Taking bird flu, Ebola virus, new coronavirus and other zoonotic epidemics as examples, she explained that One Health is a systematic science combining human medicine, veterinary medicine and environmental science, and called on the scientific community, the economic circles and local governments to strengthen cooperation to prevent human and animal diseases through scientific research and innovation in the field of general health, new diagnostic technology research and development, and vaccine development while helping the economic development of tropical countries, especially countries along the “Belt and Road”, so as to maintain the healthy and sustainable development of human beings, animals and the ecological environment.
Professor Welburn is committed to the study of disease control in the southern hemisphere and has conducted related projects in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia, and Mozambique. Her research on sleeping sickness has saved Uganda 300 million dollars in daily health care expenses, and has been praised as the most successful case in global health practice by CDC, World Health Organization, FAO, World Bank, European Union, OIE, etc.
Aaron Irving, assistant professor of ZJE, was also invited to attend the conference, and gave a speech entitled "High-throughput Multiplex Serological Strategy for Cross-species Antibody Detection" in the sub-forum.
