NEWS

The 2nd Overseas Base Network Conference was held in Lusaka, the capital of the Republic of Zambia, for three days from November 11th to 13th. The conference is part of the AMED Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases Research and Development Program (Overseas Base Research Area) research project “Research and Development and Support Functions for the Establishment of Network Core Bases.”

On the first day, a symposium was held with researchers from nine domestic universities, ten overseas affiliated centers, the core center consisting of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM) and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), and senior officials from the Zambia Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) and the National University of Zambia (UNZA), which were invited in September. The first half of the symposium consisted of presentations on information sharing from overseas centers, and the second half featured joint sessions with a Zambian senior official as MC, including presentations from UNZA and ZNPHI, which are the counterparts of the Hokkaido University Zambia Center, explanations of the activities and functions of NCGM and NIID, which will be integrated into the new organization, and a presentation on the efforts of JICA, a long-standing collaborator of Zambia. On the second day, the participating researchers visited two laboratories at ZNPHI and UNZA. In addition to touring the laboratories, there was an active two-way question-and-answer session with the staff about the status of Japan and other overseas bases. On the third day, the participants attended a lecture on actual research activities and methods given by researchers based in Zambia at the field research site, and also toured the research field.

This three-day meeting provided a great opportunity for researchers from each center to build face-to-face relationships and potentially lead to joint research with other centers.