Fiocruz takes Food Safety training to Mozambique

This November, Nutrition students and professionals of the city of Beira, in the province of Sofala, Mozambique, took part in a training course on anthropometric measurements and in field interviews taught by Fiocruz. The goal was to qualify them to make a 24-hour Diary, a technique consisting of defining and quantifying all foods and beverages ingested in the period prior to the interview (in this case, in the last 24 hours), to assess the nutritional status of children.

The training course is part of the Food and Nutritional Safety Training Program in Beira and focuses on developing the National Health Service of Mozambique and the Governance Service in the field of Food and Nutritional Safety. The Program is the result of a partnership between Fiocruz and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC, in the Portuguese acronym).

The study, which analyses the anthropometric profile of children between 6 and 59 months, is part of the master’s thesis in Public Health of Mozambican student Matias Culpa, which took place at Fiocruz Pernambuco. His thesis advisor and co-advisor are, respectively, researchers Eduarda Cesse (Fiocruz Pernambuco) and Denise Oliveira e Silva (Fiocruz Brasília). Eduarda and Denise are also in charge of this part of the training course in the African country. Matias studies in Brazil with a scholarship sponsored by Borloug Higner Education for Agricultural Research and Development (BHEARD) of the University of Michigan, which also made it possible for the Pernambuco researcher to travel to Africa.

After the training, Eduarda Cesse went to the country’s capital, Maputo, where she met with managers of the National Institute for Health of Mozambique, to discuss actions of the health education and research network: South-South cooperation between Fiocruz and Mozambican institutions. Fiocruz-Mozambique relationships predate these projects. In over a decade, the countries’ cooperation has already resulted in more than 40 master’s degrees in Mozambique in the field of Health Sciences, 14 of them specifically in Management of Health Systems.

It is also important to highlight the first class of doctoral degrees in Health Sciences, which began in early 2019. The cooperation with Mozambique also takes place through the training of employees and the installation of a pharmaceutical plant in Maputo. The work developed in the partnership between Fiocruz and INS/Misau is extremely important, as it is part of the structuring cooperation Fiocruz develops with African countries. The goal is to train local professionals to strengthen and manage the Mozambican health system.