RESISPART is sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council and DIKU, and is part of the INTPART programme. The project’s main goal is to promote interaction between education and research with the focus on international network building and antimicrobial resistance.
Resistant microbes kill at least 700 000 people each year, according to WHO. Estimates show that the number can increase to 10 million deaths annually within 30 years. As a result, poverty in the world can increase considerably and have a big effect on the world economy similar to what the financial crisis had in 2008/2009.
To make sure that antibiotics continue to be a public good in global health, it is important that education and health personnel emphasize that those who prescribe drugs are restrictive in the use of antibiotics. This is anchored in the Norwegian National Strategic Plan against Antimicrobial Resistance. Through RESISPART the students get the insight in the global challenge that AMR represents, says the leader of the project Fernanda Petersen. And they get the chance to learn and exchange knowledge about how the AMR challenge works in different countries.
International interactions and workshops
Researchers and students from all institutions met for seminars and workshops about how you can deal with the AMR challenge. Both Bachelor, Master and PhD students, postdoctorate fellows, professor and researchers from FoP, UiC, Forsyth Institute, JCVI and UiO participated.
Workshops regarding microbiome and resistome analysis took place. Such analysis can amongst others be used to understand how AMR develop.
Students also participated in seminars where they could discuss each other's research through Problem Based Learning (PBL). The students had before the meeting received abstracts from each other’s research and these were used as a base for discussion. It is also interesting to see how we can use the knowledge from these workshops and seminars for future collaborations.
Annual symposium
The annual symposium was held at FoP and was open for external participation: Antimicrobial resistance: challenges and novel approaches inspired by oral research. Students were also given the possibility to showcase their research and received input for ideas from others.
Tour
The leaders from The Faculty of Dentistry (UiO) were given a tour of the clinics, the laboratories and where the students work at Piracicaba Dental School. It was a great opportunity to see in which areas we can focus on when planning for future collaborations.
Future collaborations
This meeting builds on the already well-established collaboration between the mentioned institutions. Students from UiO have previously travelled to UiC and the Faculty of Dentistry at UiO has previously received students from the Piracicaba Dental School.
The goal is to establish a long-lasting collaboration exchange agreement between Piracicaba Dental School and The Faculty of Dentistry at UiO that can last beyond the already sponsored project period. This was the reason for the meeting and discussions about the international collaboration between the leaders from The Faculty of Dentistry (UiO) and Piracicaba Dental School.
Anchoring the collaboration at an institutional level is very important to make sure that the synergy that this project brings to education and research continue beyond the project period, says Fernanda Petersen. We are very happy for the warm welcome we received from all the researchers, staff and students and in particular professor Pedro Ricomini who coordinated everything at Piracicaba Dental School. We had a very positive experience and we can’t wait to see what the future for the project!
