Infectious diseases are an ever-changing source of affliction in the world, and there is a need for immediate plans of action to control them now and in the future. Due to the constant changes in disease patterns and causative agents, research in the field requires a constant update of knowledge and novel approaches that allow a faster design, and implementation of interventions. To reach this goal, a multistep integrated approach coordinated between research and implementation science needs to be achieved, and I believe a comprehensive training in science mixed with public health skills can contribute in this transference. Therefore, I want to focus on this field and combine biomedical skills about the pathogenic process of infectious with …show more content…
I went to one of the top public universities in Colombia (Universidad del Valle) after obtaining an outstanding grade in the national exam for entrance to higher education. In my time there, I adapted my goals according to my newfound interest in fields related to infectious diseases, such as immunology and microbiology. Despite the emphasis of medical training in Colombia towards clinical practice and the partial oversight of necessary skills for a physician-researcher (e.g. basic sciences and epidemiology), I strived to independently acquire abilities in infectious diseases and biomedical sciences. I performed additional clinical rotations in infectious diseases at other Universities (in Colombia and Argentina) and participated in a public health research project about quality of health services for elderly people. When I got my medical diploma, I wanted to perform my year of mandatory social service in research, but no opportunities were available at the time; so I performed it in a regional program for rural medical attention and control of tuberculosis. All the experiences showed me how diseases (including infectious ones) impact society at multiple levels, and that only multidisciplinary approaches (social, biological/medical and administrative) can truly achieve control of them or at least mitigate their …show more content…
So, I looked for opportunities to train in the field and found, again, that they were limited for medical graduates. Nevertheless, my search led me to participate in the Colombian Young Investigators program, which awarded me a position in a renowned institution for infectious diseases research: CIDEIM. Here, I started to fully commit to research working in a disease called leishmaniasis, which affects socially deprived communities world-wide and suffers from lacking economical investment in research. My work in the past two years at CIDEIM helped me develop capacity in clinical and basic research through conduction of clinical studies and training in wet lab techniques, academic writing, “Omic” sciences, epidemiology and immunology; it has also cleared me of any reasonable doubt about devoting my work to biomedical research in infectious diseases. My initial project wanted to explore metabolic biomarkers in blood that could predict the appearance of adverse reactions to the highly toxic treatment of leishmaniasis. Our study required us to apply and understand multiple analytical algorithms of statistics and bioinformatics, an unknown subject for me at the time. Our results, although exploratory, pave the way for future biomarker research and were only possible through the data analysis sciences we implemented and studied. This second period of training has driven me to analyze how I can combine