Project begins data collection on the triple border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia

The Mosaic Project, coordinated by the French Research Institute for Development (IRD), began its data collection stage in Brazil this week, starting with the Alto Solimões region in Amazonas, in the Triple Border area (Brazil/Peru/Colombia), in the group's first mission to Latin America. The aim of the project is to implement open and replicable multimodal information ecosystems on the health of populations in Brazil's border areas with French Guiana and Colombia and Peru, and on the border between Kenya and Tanzania on the African continent. A group made up of researchers from France, Portugal, Poland, Kenya, Colombia, Peru and Brazil, with the participation of the scientific coordinator and the project manager, Emmanuel Roux and Lucile Guerin, was welcomed at Fiocruz Amazônia in Manaus, marking the start of the mission. Along with Fiocruz Amazônia, the project also includes researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (IOC/Fiocruz), the Institute for Scientific and Technological Communication and Information in Health (Icict/Fiocruz) and the Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp/Fiocruz).

The project aims to implement open and replicable multimodal information ecosystems on the health of populations in Brazil's border areas with French Guiana and Colombia and Peru (Photo: Julio Pedrosa)

The Mosaic Project was selected by the European Union's Horizon Europe program for funding from 2024 to 2027. It is the first European call for research proposals to be supported by the International Platform for Science, Technology and Innovation in Health (Pictis), the result of a cooperation agreement signed by Fiocruz with the University of Aveiro in Portugal. The group was welcomed by the director of Fiocruz Amazônia, Stefanie Lopes, who highlighted the innovative nature of the project's approach to health and surveillance actions in border regions and the importance of the joint participation of the institutions.

“Mosaic is a project that brings together fields of Fiocruz's work in health surveillance, in local communities, understanding the main diseases that circulate in the project's intervention regions, and bringing solutions for new monitoring and surveillance systems and health training systems within this larger context, under the auspices of the European Union,” said Carlos Eduardo Andrade Lima da Rocha, advisor to the IOC/Fiocruz Vice Directorate of IDP, who accompanied the group on the mission. Lima da Rocha highlights the strategic role of the Platform in enabling Fiocruz researchers to participate in the program.

Fiocruz's International Platform for Science, Technology and Innovation in Health (Pictis) is aimed at consolidating an international health research center with Fiocruz and the University of Aveiro in Portugal as its leading institutions. It manages and participates in teaching, research, development and innovation activities in health, with the aim of generating new products, processes and services, as well as participating in the transfer and dissemination of new knowledge and technologies for the well-being of society.

Paulo Peiter, a researcher at the IOC/Fiocruz Parasitic Diseases Laboratory and the One Health/Global Health Sector Laboratory of the International Platform for Science, Technology and Innovation in Health, highlighted the importance of the partnership between the researchers taking part in the project and the engagement of populations in the cross-border community health surveillance initiative. “We are starting a new challenge, which is to go into the field here in the Amazon, in a very particular moment in a scenario of historic drought, a context related to the project's aim of working on the issue of climate change and how it is affecting the daily lives of populations, talking with and understanding how they perceive these needs,” explained Peiter, who is leading the work package under the responsibility of the IOC/Fiocruz, via Pictis.

Researchers Sérgio Luz Bessa, José Joaquín Carvajal Cortes and Alessandra Nava, from the Center for Pathogens, Reservoirs and Vectors in the Amazon - PreV Amazonia, of the Laboratory for the Ecology of Communicable Diseases in the Amazon (EDTA), are working on the project for Fiocruz Amazônia. Mosaic further includes the African Conservation Center, from Kenya; the University of Warszawski, from Poland; the University of Lisbon, from Portugal; the Cayenne Hospital Center, from French Guiana; the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, the Center for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development; and the Universities of Perpignan, D'Aix Marseille and D'Artois, from France, the University of Brasilia (UnB), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the National University of Colombia.

“Mosaic's trajectory has been closely monitored by relevant bodies within the European Union and in Brazil, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Union Delegation in Brasilia, as well as other Fiocruz bodies, in this important stage of building a strategic alliance between ILMD, IOC, ICICTI and ENSP and the other partners that make up this consortium,” says Pictis' scientific coordinator, José Cordeiro, noting that Mosaic's first mission to Kenya was successful and well conducted by all partners.

Triple Border

In the Triple Border, the group met with researchers and local actors at the National University of Colombia, sharing experiences in health surveillance, climate change and successful projects in health and in improving living conditions, involving the communities living in the cross-border territory. On the second day, the team worked in the field at the Upetana Primary Care Unit in Tabatinga, which belongs to the Alto Rio Solimões Special Indigenous Health District (DSEI), where there was a round table discussion with the Mosaic Project researchers and the Tikuna midwives and a presentation of the local social cartography by the DSEI technicians, who belong to the Kokama ethnic group and are graduates of the Vigifront Program. The activities further involved visits to the Border Laboratory (Lafron), in Tabatinga, and to the Sinchi Institute - Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Cientificas, in Leticia, a city in Colombia on the border with Brazil.