Invernizzi (UniMiB): “With Bridge-Uganda, Bicocca in Low-Income Countries”

“The Bridge outpost in Uganda, a branch of the University of Milan-Bicocca in the heart of the Lacor Hospital in northern Uganda, is part of a series of projects that are leading the University of Bicocca and its Department of Medicine, but also many other departments of the university, to invest and work in low-income countries”. This was stated by Pietro Invernizzi, director of the Department of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Milan-Bicocca and of Bridge (Bicocca research and innovation for development and global health)-Uganda, today at the presentation of the new project of the Milanese university, which starts from the Lombard capital and arrives in the district of Gulu in northern Uganda. This is the second outpost abroad of the Bicocca, after the ‘MaRhe Center’ in the Maldives archipelago, the research and training center dedicated to marine biology studies.

The Ugandan outpost, presented during the event ‘Global Health: the role of academia’, is part of the ‘Bicocca Global Health Center’ project, which involves all the university’s professionals in the development of innovative and sustainable solutions to address global health challenges through a multidisciplinary approach and to promote health and well-being in low- and middle-income countries. “We believe that exposing students and specialists to low-resource contexts allows us to do our job better, which is to train and do research – explains Invernizzi – In the context of training we have defined and named a training method ‘Two Pillars Project’. The first is the training of the professional – be it a doctor, nurse, obstetrician – who will dedicate himself professionally to the health of human beings. The second is the training of the human components of these professionals, because, to be good doctors and good nurses, it is necessary to have an adequate relationship with illness and death”.

The results are positive. “The feedback from the students – Invernizzi emphasizes – is very good, but it is not new: for years we have seen young and old moving in contexts of this type and, when they return, we see them transformed, charged, with empathy and with a desire to cure, not only with the intent of giving therapies to the patient, but with the desire to take care of them. With Bridge-Uganda we organized and institutionalized the exhibition, which we already knew would give so much to our young people and, even if indirectly, also to us, to the system and the world in which we live”.