Central Asian medical universities participate in UT summer school on environmental health

From 7 to 14 July, academic staff and doctoral students from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and North India participate in the University of Tartu summer school.

At the summer school in Tartu, participants learn about new research methods in environmental health and epidemiology, which they can use to conduct similar studies in their home universities.

“Starting such research is a great challenge for medical universities of Central Asia, because there is no political support to these scientific projects. Air pollution, however, in the cities of those countries is so high that you can nearly see it with the naked eye. Also the problem of the availability and quality of drinking water is becoming more acute in Central Asia due to climatic changes,” said leader of the summer school, Associate Professor in Environmental Health Hans Orru.

Researchers and teaching staff members of UT Institute of Family Medicine and Public Health and UT Institute of Social Studies teach at the summer university. In the TUTORIAL project also universities from Milan and Berlin are involved.

The summer school takes place within the ERASMUS+ project TUTORIAL “Strengthening Network for Education, Research and Innovation in Environmental Health in Asia”. This project aims to develop the capability of environmental health centres that were established previously under the CANERIEH project, and create master’s programmes in environmental health. Through doctoral programmes the project enables two doctoral students from each centre to work at least for a month in the University of Tartu.

Additional information: Hans Orru, Associate Professor in Environmental Health, 737 4203, hans.orru@ut.ee