Speech Therapy is the new Fiocruz course hosted by The Global Health Network

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This is the second training offered by Virtual Campus Fiocruz and the first one in three languages

Hellowa Correa and Flávia Bueno

 Following the agreement between Fiocruz and The Global Health Network, the course Speech therapy healthcare: oral sensory-motor disorders in the field of neonatology is now available at the Global Health Training Centre in three languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. The course was developed by a multiprofessional team from the National Institute of Women, Children and Adolescents Health Fernandes Figueira (IFF/Fiocruz) and aimed at speech therapists and other health workers interested in the topic of dysphagia (difficulty in swallowing).

 The course Coordinator, Mariangela Bartha, has a speech therapy background, with over 35 years of experience. Bartha has been working at IFF/Fiocruz to solve problems caused by dysphagia and has dedicated her work to avoid the gastrostomy in newborns - a surgery to help gastric decompression. The researcher recalled her trajectory and highlighted that the course will be a legacy: “I would like to offer training to public health professionals concerning dysphagia,'' she says. 

 The course has eight modules with 5 hours each, totaling 40h, and was the first tutoring provided in three languages by the Fiocruz Virtual Campus. The modules were distributed by themes with the participation and discussion of the multiprofessional team. It portrays the interdisciplinary work performed in the neonatal Intensive Care Unit (ICU), aiming to promote the assistance and incentive to the use of human milk for the newborn and infant with complex health conditions, who present dysphagia.

The Platform

Almost 400,000 eLearners from different countries in Africa, Europe and across the Americas had taken over 2 million modules since The Global Health Training Centre was launched in 2011. In December, 2020, Fiocruz incorporated its first course in the platform, Transmission, surveillance, control and prevention of Yellow Fever, available in both English and Portuguese. So far, the Yellow Fever course has been taken over 1500 times. 

The initiative to strengthen Fiocruz's presence in the remote learning platform is part of a broader project, coordinated by the Fiocruz Hub. By 2021, at least four other courses will be adapted and translated, reinforcing Fiocruz's role as a public health research institution willing to cooperate and share its knowledge with researchers worldwide.