Confronting Arboviruses: María Guadalupe Guzmán MD PhD DrSc

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The 1980s were a watershed for Cuban research in medicine and health: significant financing and material resources buttressed a strategy to improve population health through enhanced biopharmaceutical innovation and clinical best practices applied to Cuba’s universal public health system. Redirecting research priorities and providing substantial public funding to tackle the top population health problems was a radical idea at the time, especially for a developing country like Cuba. Doing so has become a hallmark of Cuba’s scientific achievements and approach ever since. Among the institutions exemplifying this strategy is the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute (IPK). Founded in 1937 with a research mission dedicated to parasitology and transmission of known tropical diseases, it wasn’t until the late Dr Gustavo Kouri Flores was appointed director in 1979 that IPK’s core objectives and facilities were expanded to include a comprehensive teaching component, a state-of-the-art clinical hospital to treat tropical and other communicable diseases, and an international collaboration strategy to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer. Today, IPK is Cuba’s national reference center for diagnosis, treatment, control and prevention of communicable diseases and is a regional leader in applied research into so-called neglected diseases—usually diseases of the poor. With departments of parasitology, bacteriology, virology, pharmacology and more, it’s a magnet for some of the country’s most accomplished scientists—most of them women—and a major contributor to Cuba’s portfolio of scientific products, research and publishing. This interview with virologist Dr Maria Guadalupe Guzman, director of IPK’s Reference Center for Research and Diagnosis, is the third in MEDICC Review’s series on outstanding Cuban women in science and medicine. Recognized as a leading expert in dengue research, Dr Guzman is also director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center for Dengue and its Control and was president of the Arbovirus Diagnosis Laboratory Network of the Americas (RELDA) from 2010 through 2018. Currently, she is president of the Cuban Society of Microbiology and Parasitology, directs IPK’s Scientific Council that sets the Institute’s research priorities, and is a distinguished professor and author. In 2016, she published Dengue (Editorial Ciencias Medicas, Havana), the most comprehensive collection of original Cuban research available on the topic.