Health

Paraguayan Woman Uses SSI Training to Fight Dengue in Her Home Country

Leticia Franco isolates dengue virus while a student observes.

"SSI trains researchers in their home country, helping them adapt techniques to local resource constraints and overcome their obstacles. The impact on local health is enormous."

The success of Paraguayan health scientist Leticia Franco highlights the Sustainable Sciences Institute's efforts to bring health training and resources to developing countries through a local connection.

When SSI decided to hold a workshop on advanced molecular diagnostics and epidemiology in Paraguay, it selected Franco as the in-country coordinator. Franco, a molecular biology researcher for a health sciences institute in Asunción, had been working on hantavirus and Chagas disease.

Franco traveled to the United States in August 2000 to master molecular and virological methods of dengue virus detection to prepare for the SSI workshop. She trained at SSI Board President Eva Harris' laboratory at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

Upon returning to Paraguay, she was able to immediately put her newly learned techniques into practice: a large dengue epidemic had caught the Paraguayan health system off guard, with about 24,000 cases diagnosed from January to June 2000. Franco aided in investigating the epidemic and began a project of dengue surveillance.

In April 2001, she identified the appearance of dengue virus in a neighborhood of Asunción. Her data galvanized health authorities to take immediate action to curb the spread of the virus by controlling the mosquito that transmits it, and the outbreak was contained.

Franco used her training to design the dengue fever portion of SSI's August workshop to reflect local interests. Franco rated the Paraguay workshop a huge success, saying: "There are not many institutions like SSI, directed to technology transfer in Latin America, and its workshops are invaluable. Instead of incurring high costs to train a few researchers in the U.S., SSI trains many researchers in their home country, helping them adapt techniques to local resource constraints and overcome their obstacles. The impact of this on local health is enormous."

Franco continues to work with SSI in her fight against the dengue epidemic in Paraguay. She will also serve as a workshop instructor at an SSI workshop in El Salvador this summer.

For more information, contact Tina M. Knight at (415) 348-8939 or tmknight@ssilink.org.