Myongji Hospital launches infectious disease training for international healthcare professionals

Myongji Hospital said Tuesday that its ODA Project Team is offering an infectious disease response expert course for 22 healthcare professionals, including doctors and virologists, from six countries in Asia and Africa.

The participants, invited to Korea by the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH), began their course this month at Myongji Hospital in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, following an entrance ceremony at Yonsei University College of Medicine last month.

The seven-week “Fourth Infectious Disease Response Expert Course” at Myongji Hospital is attended by healthcare professionals from Vietnam, Cambodia, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Uzbekistan. Among the participants are Dr. Bernard Nkrumah, head of the Department of Diagnostic Laboratory Medicine at the National University of Ghana, and Dr. Nataliya, head of the National Institute of Virology of Uzbekistan.

Trainees will learn about Myungji Hospital's unique infectious disease response system and know-how, including strategies for responding to emerging infectious diseases, infectious disease diagnosis and testing, clinical treatment, as well as infectious disease screening and prevention and after-effects of confirmed infections.

In particular, Myongji Hospital plans to maximize the effectiveness of the training through one-on-one personalized guidance between medical staff and trainees, based on its experience in training many trainees so far, starting with the first class of the Lee Jong-wook Fellowship Program in 2022.

In November this year, the supervising professor will visit the trainees' countries to conduct additional training with on-site evaluation to ensure that the contents of the training are well implemented in the field.

"Myongji Hospital has many years of experience in training, so we have designed a customized training program to meet the trainees' learning objectives," said Professor Kang Yoo-min of the Department of Infectious Diseases, the project leader. "We hope that through this training, we can share our experiences in responding to infectious diseases in each country and lay the foundation for cooperation and response in infectious disease outbreaks."

Professor Song Chang-eun of the Department of Otolaryngology, director of the ODA Project Team, said, "Myongji Hospital has been proactively responding to various outbreaks of new infectious diseases such as Covid-19 and MERS and providing effective treatment."

Director Song added that through communication and exchange, the project team would strive to strengthen cooperation between Myongji Hospital and the trainees and lead to the improvement of medical capabilities in each country.

Meanwhile, the Lee Jong-wook Fellowship Program, an ODA project named after the late Dr. Lee, who served as the sixth director-general of the World Health Organization, invites healthcare personnel from developing countries to Korea for specialized training.