Research Group Heussler (Malaria I) - Bernhard-Nocht-Institut für ...

Education and Teaching
The objective of the Course is to prepare physicians for
professional tasks in tropical and subtropical countries
and to enable them to preventively care for visitors of
warm climates, to diagnose and to treat imported tropical
diseases and perform the relevant consultations.
Teaching concentrates on the pathogenesis, diagnosis,
clinical entities, treatment, epidemiology, and prophylaxis
of the parasitic, bacterial, viral and non-transmissible
diseases of tropical countries. Addressed are the biology,
epidemiology, and control of the causative agents,
vectors and reservoirs. Additional topics include the
characteristics of the various clinical disciplines in the
tropical environment, problems of private and public
health care in poor countries as well as structures and
performance of developmental cooperation and disaster
missions in medicine.
The central topics of the Course are human diseases
characteristic for tropical climates. The curriculum is divided
into twelve sections of one week each. Clinical
differential diagnosis is the major guideline for the curriculum
because most of the participants are practising
physicians. Taxonomy is the second criterion in order
to facilitate systematic learning. Entomology is considered
in its relation to the etiology and transmission of
disease and therefore follows clinical classifications.
Malaria because of its outstanding relevance is regarded
a separate topic.
Courses on Tropical Medicine
2002 and 2003
Course on Tropical Medicine 2002 Photographer: Klaus Jürries
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The following curriculum is accepted by the German
Federal Board of Physicians to be part of the official
training programme for physicians to specialize in tropical
medicine, and also by the American Society of Tropical
Medicine and Hygiene. The Course starts out with
one week of introductions reaching from the techniques
of microscopy to fundamental immunology and
the use of the Internet in medicine. In week 2, basic epidemiology
and malaria and in weeks 3 and 4, systemic
febrile infections are dealt with. The diseases are put in
order according to relevance, clinical similarities and
taxonomic aspects. They are followed by intestinal diseases
in week 5, and in weeks 6 and 7 by helminth infections,
which often share the hallmark of eosinophilia
and primarily affect the intestine or the skin. Tropical
dermatology including cutaneous leishmaniasis and
leprosy are presented in week 8. The main topic of
week 9 is HIV infection and AIDS addressing in detail
the management of tuberculosis and opportunistic infections
in tropical countries. Week 10 is dedicated to
travel medicine, simple laboratory techniques and tropical
peculiarities of the established medical disciplines,
e.g. in neurology, surgery, and gynaecology, and in
weeks 10 and 11 specific problems in public health and
developmental cooperation are being discussed. Week
12 contains summaries of clinical entities and exercises,
and in week 13 including paedicatrics, haemato-