The UFF hosted, on November 29th and 30th, the International Seminar “Italian and Brazilian Sanitary Reforms: Trajectories and Perspectives”, which discussed the project to install an “intermediate care unit” in Niterói, among other issues. The initiative took place as part of a partnership between the university, the Niterói’s Health Department and the Social Sanitary Service of the Emilia Romagna region in Bologna (Italy) and will attract an amount of eighty thousand euros derived from the agreement between countries.
Aimed at people with chronic conditions that have worsened symptoms and are unable to be seen at home, the unit will offer care services to improve the care conditions of patients in the public health system, using primarily light, rehabilitation technologies, with low cost and high effectiveness.
To UFF’s president Antônio Cláudio Nóbrega, “this project represents an important innovation in the health network of Niterói. Following the international trend, it prepares health services for current and future times, with a significant increase in the elderly population in relation to the general population, with a significant increase in chronic conditions. It proposes a more effective care in the recovery to the chronic without the need of hospital internment, improving the efficiency of the services, with the reduction of costs in this activity.”
Divided into two fronts, the project, in addition to providing this service through a pilot program at Carlos Tortelly Municipal Hospital, includes training a group of professionals to work in it. It is expected that the training process will start in the coming months.
We have identified an innovative health proposal that potentially has the possibility to prevent hospitalizations, reducing the use of hospital beds and taking better care of the population.
Túlio Batista
According to the project coordinator and professor of the Institute of Collective Health, Túlio Batista, this is a process of “technology transfer, in which Niterói will be contemplated with the knowledge and practices of a similar care experience in Italy. And in return, UFF will bring them what our health care system can offer in terms of learning.”
Knowing the services of the region of Emilia Romagna, explained the coordinator, “we identified an innovative proposal for health, which potentially has the possibility to avoid hospitalizations, reducing the use of hospital beds and taking better care of the population.” This care service, better known as “intermediate care”, would be a support point for activities carried out in Primary Care, where hospital or palliative care is not required.
For the Director-General of the Emilia Romagna Region Health Secretariat and one of the speakers at the sanitary reform seminar, Kyriakoula Petropulacos, this is a very important partnership, through which a connection between the university and the health system is established: “we have a very old population and we need to take care of it through intermediate care. We can share the results of our work and, on the other hand, take from Brazil all this work developed in the field of education.”
According to Petropulacos, although Brazil is a much younger country than Italy, it is facing the same problems: “Here, the population is also aging and developing chronic diseases. We have to find effective treatment options, making use of research for this purpose. In this scenario, the collaboration between Brazil and Italy is very important.”
Member of the Scientific Council of the International Health Center at the University of Bologna, Professor Ardigò Martino explained that the network created between the countries “facilitates research in both contexts, enabling professionals to stay longer in different places. At first, this is a shock, to understand the differences, to adapt. But with this ‘discomfort’, it facilitates the understanding by those involved of these global connections that are determinants of health in different contexts.”
