Upon Dr Siswanto's invitation, who is currently Head of National Institute Of Health Research And Development (NIHRD, Ministry of Health, Indonesia), Prof Furen Zhang and his team members attended the 4th International Symposium on Health Research &?14th National Congress of Indonesian Public Health Association in Indonesia from Nov 27-30 2019.
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This international congress routinely conducted and resulted strong health leaders' commitments and policy recommendation towards optimal public health development at the national and global levels. As leprosy is still a major public health problem in Indonesia and lack of effective elimination method, Prof Zhang was invited to introduce the successful experience in China entitled "Genetically based prediction susceptibility of leprosy and treatment response to leprosy" as a plenary report.
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In that report, Prof Zhang reported the tremendous achievement for leprosy control in China. With the effort made by the government and institute, the prevalence of leprosy has been below the elimination level. He also reported the change of leprosy control mode, from a vertical management mode to a novel flat mode, which involved the hospital into the active case finding. Prof Zhang also reported the current original work regarding to the discovery of leprosy risk factor as well as the discovery of dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome (DHS) associated risk factor-HLA-B*13:01 in collaboration with JJ of GIS; further risk prediction based chemoprophylaxis, further clinical trial to eliminate the harm of DHS, and the technology based on qPCR and ddPCR for the leprosy early diagnosis. With the help of this original work, the leprosy harm has been eliminated in China significantly.
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Aiming to promote these recognized technology and further accelerating the progress for leprosy harm elimination, Prof Zhang was funded by Ministry of Science and Technology of China as the National Key Research and Development Program of China?? (2016YFE0201500). This funding was mainly about the how to eliminate the leprosy harm by implementation those advanced leprosy control technology through international collaboration. To further enhance the collaboration of leprosy control between China and Indonesia, Shandong First Medical University, NIHRD Papua and Netherland Leprosy Reliefs (NLRs) jointly conducted "the 2nd International Symposium For Leprosy Preventive And Treatment Research" as a para-symposium. Prof Zhang and Dr. Vivi Setyawati (Head of Central of Research and Development of Biomedicine and Medical Basic Technology, NIHRD) chaired the symposium. Dr Yonghu Sun from Shandong Medical University, Dr. Mukul Sharma from National Institute National Institute of Research in Tribal Health, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India, Dr Cita Rosita from University of Airlangga gave presentations on the control of leprosy. A panel discussion on how to accelerant the elimination of leprosy in Indonesia was also conducted between Chinese exports and the domestic experts from Indonesia.
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Along with the experts from NIHRD and NLRs, Prof Zhang visited the leprosy pocket in local community of Indonesia. Four newly diagnosed leprosy patients were reviewed and introduced by local doctors. Prof Zhang carefully checked the clinical manifestation of these patients. Newly developed method related to the diagnosis and treatment was also introduced by him. Several questions of diseases and prognosis were raised by the patients and local doctors, which were solved by Chinese experts.?
