1st Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) meeting

1^st JCC meeting

On January 25, 2019, the 1^st Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC) meeting for “The Project for the Establishment of the One Health Prevention and Treatment Network Model for the Elimination of Rabies in the Philippines” was held. ( Somerset, Alabang, Muntinlupa, Metro Mania). 
JCC is an annual meeting to discuss the program status and the progress. 

Nearly forty (40)participants attended the meeting.
Research Institute for Tropical Medicine(RITM),  
Department of Health (DOH)
Department of Agriculture (DA) 
Japanese universities, Embassy and JICA.

Dr.Leda M. Hernandez, DOH acted as a chairperson and Dr. Mary G. Miranda was M.C. 
The opening part was a warm welcome of the chairperson and Mr. Tomoya Yoshida, JICA headquarters following Mr.Yohei Maruyama who explained on the SATREPS (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development) scheme. 

The speaker then was Dr.Beatriz P. Quiambao, Project manager, and Chief, CRD, RITM spoke current situation of rabies in the Philippines and challenges being faced and also mentioned expectations from the Project to address some of the issues through its implementation. 

Prof.Nishizono, Chief Advisor, and Professor, Oita University used a PowerPoint presentation to explain how efficiently the Project's introducing new diagnostic methods can be utilized in combination with one-health approach in the field of rabies elimination activities.

After the coffee break, Dr.Sheila Marie C. Esposo, RITM and Dr. Joely T. Ongtangco, RADDL3 who participated in a training course in Japan shared their experiences with JCC attendees. Dr. Kazunori Kimitsuki, Oita University presented previous activities.

One of the main agendas in the 1^st JCC was to attain consent on the proposed modification of PDM (Project Design Matrix). This task was taken by Dr.Nobuo Saito, Deputy Chief Advisor and Assistant Professor, Oita University. 
After several discussions,  finally, the chairperson asked attendees if the proposed modification, as well as the plan of activities in 2019, were in favour of approval, unanimous consent was attained.

Congratulations!! Hope successful outputs in five years.  

   

Merry Christmas and Happy new year soon

New staff joined our project as a secretary.
Her name is Ms Belle who has working experience in Singapore.
She is so delightful, charming and very friendly person.
She must contribute a lot to our project. Welcome, Belle!

We had a Christmas party with Tohoku group. They kindly invited us to join their party. Thank you very much always.
We are using their office space and follow their management. It is really really helpful for our project.

A happy new year soon!!



Christmath Party with Tohoku group
Tohoku students were firstly eating Baluto

Dr Quiambao visit to Oita University

On the 13rd Nov 2018
Dr Quiambao visited Oita University. 
Oita University firstly invited Dr Quiambao.
She met with Director (Dr Kitano) of Oitauniversity.
Then visited several departments in Oita University  (ER, Heliport to Doctor`s Helicopter, Radiology Department, Outpatient Department) 
She visited BSL3 laboratory specialized to rabies experiment. Only Oita University in Japan has BSL3 specifically used to rabies laboratory work.

On the 14th Nov, 2018
Dr Quiambao and Dr Saito visited ADTEC company Watanabe medical group located in Usa City, Oita Prefecture.
ADTEC produce various type of rapid diagnostic kits including human diagnosis and animal diagnosis.
Prof Nishizono and ADTEC collaboratively invented rabies diagnostic kit (antigen kit and antibody detection kit)
This company has great skill to make unique diagnostic kits which other companies are difficult to produce.
Our project strongly collaborates with ADTEC and try to achieve our target (elimination rabies). We are sure that Japanese medical companies can contribute to rabies control and elimination!


Courtesy court to President Dr Kitano


See doctor`s helicopter



University Hospital tour


Visit Rabies BSL3 laboratory


Visit ADTEC company

Dr Quiambao symposium speaker in The 9th ACIPD

1oth Nov ~ 12th Nov 2018
The 9th Asian Congress of Pediatric Infectious Diseases was held in Fukuoka, Japan.

Our Principal investigator, Dr Beatriz Quiambao in RITM, was invited as guest speaker of the symposium in the Congress.

Dr Quiambao explained the situation, the National Program and the challenges and necessary next steps.  Dr Quiambao also introduced our JAPOHR project.

Most audiences were impressive to her presentation and understood the difficult situation. Our project should tackle these problems together with many stakeholders.

Mr. Shimokawa starts to work as a Coordinator in our RITM SATREPS office from today.

After graduating from Miyazaki University, he participated in JOCV(Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers) in Malawi and had worked in 9 countries so far.

It is the second time for him to work in the Philippines. He worked in the Philippines 28 years ago as a JICA Senior Volunteer.

Upon having all the members joined, we should be running the Project at its's full strength from now on!

Calumpit field investigation and courtesy court to Mayor

On the 25th and 26th October, we visited Calumpit where is our project site. Our project aims to establish "One health network model" in this area.

We visited 2 Rural Health Units (RHU) and 1 Barangay health station. There were nice health care workers (doctors, nurse and barangay health workers They are very supportive to our projects.  We did a simple question to residents in Calumpit.  We felt the knowledge about rabies is relatively high in this area among not only adults but also children. Most families have dogs or cats in this area.

We also visited the Animal bite health centre (ABTC) in Bulacan medical centre. So many people visited the centre to seek Post-exposure prophylaxis. As there is no ABTC in Calumpit, most people visit this ABTC after animal exposure.

On the 25th , we visited DA region 3 and meet with RTD. We explained our projects and had a nice discussion. RADDL3 is the most important field site in our project. Their understandings and supports are necessary for our projects.

On the 26th October, we were honoured to meet the mayor in Calumpit and we were able to explain our project with relative organizations (Bulacan Provincial health office, Bulacan Veterinary Office, DOH region3, JICA). The mayor is very friendly with much humour and we chatted a lot about our future plan. And he was very supportive of our project.

We were able to gather many supportive people in the meeting. We hope our project to help the elimination and control rabies in this area!

Meeting with DA-BAI OIC Dr. Ronnie Domingo

On the 16th October 2018
We had a useful discussion with Dr Ronne Domingo ( Office in Charge, Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industry)

We explained our project and requested strong collaboration with DA-BAI.
In the discussion, we decided to start a discussion to build a new integrated data sharing system to prevent human rabies.

We hope that the active diagnosis of dog rabies and the data share system in the DA-BAI can contribute elimination of rabies in the Philippines.

For safety animal rabies diagnosis, we will provide specialized animal biosafety cabinet and fluorescent microscope in this project.