Story Behind the Picture
“The research on Wolbachia mosquito in Bantul has not only obtained supports from district government but also from the Vice governor of Yogyakarta Special Province, Sri Paduka Paku Alam IX. On Dec 8 2014, Sri Paduka Paku Alam IX symbolically placed the bucket containing eggs of Wolbachia-Aedes aegypti in one of residential houses at RT 9 Jomblangan, Banguntapan, Bantul. This placement marked the launch of the Eliminate Dengue Project (EDP)-Yogya in controlling Dengue by releasing Wolbachia- Aedes aegypti in Jomblangan and Singosaren 3, Banguntapan, Bantul.”
Profile
The Center for Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing Universitas Gadjah Mada was established in 1996 through the University Research Graduate Education (URGE) project grant from the Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Indonesia. The vision of the Center is to be an internationally recognized center for research and training in tropical diseases. In line with this vision, the missions are (1) to develop new knowledge, tools, intervention, strategies for tropical disease control and (2) to strengthen the capacity of human resources in disease endemic areas. With almost 20 years of experience in research, the Center maintains an extensive portfolio of collaboration with reputable national and international partners which ensure relevance and quality of research and training. To improve our capacity to manage research project we recently developed a new organization structure which involves establishment of five disease-based research divisions, namely TB, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Dengue and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs).
Currently the Center manages twelve research projects, of which ten are multi years and international projects funded such as by WHO, European Commission, Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation, KNCV, Belgium-DGDC, and USAID. The only multi year and national project is EDP-Yogya, funded by Tahija Foundation in Jakarta. Our research project portfolio varies from biomedical (e.g. Human immune response to Tuberculosis infection), clinical (e.g. International Research Consortium on Dengue Risk Assesement, Management and Surveillance- IDAMS study and Neglected Infectious Disease-NIDIAG Project), to implementation research (e.g.EDP-Yogya, Clinton Health Access Initiative Project, and HIV Awal Testing and Treatment Indonesia-HATI Project).
As a training center, the Center for Tropical Medicine has been internationally recognised. We were appointed as TBCTA Regional Training Center for Tuberculosis Control in Asia since 2008. The Center has organised various training courses related to health research and disease control program both nationally and internationally, such as Budget planning and project management, Hospital DOTS Linkage, TB Infection Control, Public Private Mix for TB Control, Effective Project Planning Evaluation and Operational Research. The Center was also appointed as the Regional Training Center (RTC) for health research for the Southeast Asian region by WHO/TDR in 2010. Its mandates is to improve research capacity in South East Asia. More than 25 trainings on Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and Good Clinical Laboratory Practice (GCLP) both in house and national training, have been conducted successfully. In 2015, the Center has conducted four regional courses, i.e. GCP, GCLP, Good Health Research Practice (GHRP) and Implementation Research (IR). Almost 600 participants have been trained by the Center from 2008 to 2015.
Our center also provides consultancy services, particularly to the Ministry of Health and different stakeholders in the development of proposals and policies such as developing Global Fund Round 9 proposal, GF Concept Notes, National Strategic Plan for TB and National Strategic Plan for Sexual Transmitted Infections.
