The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) was selected in the first phase of the Unitaid (an entity linked to the World Health Organization) announcement that aims to eliminate congenital transmission of Chagas disease in endemic countries in Latin America. The Chagas Consortium is coordinated by the Evandro Chagas National Institute of Infectology (INI/Fiocruz) and has a partnership with other units of the Foundation, Brazilian federal universities, in addition to the Ministry of Health and non-governmental organizations.

The project has activities planned in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay, and will operate for four years with actions divided into two axes. The first is to carry out an implementation survey in target municipalities in the four countries, developed with the goal of improving access to and demand for existing services for Chagas disease. The second, in turn, seeks to develop practical tools for diagnosis and innovative treatments to combat the disease.

Led by the researcher at the INI/Fiocruz Clinical Research Laboratory for Chagas Disease, Andréa Silvestre, the technical development of the project is under the responsibility of the Foundation, while Fiotec appears as a “leading organization with regards to the administrative, financial and logistical management of the consortium,” explains Thaissa Takamoto, an analyst on the institution's Project Initiation team. "Fiotec, thus, is responsible for centralizing the project management for Fiocruz, the participating countries and institutions, mainly in the reports that must be made to Unitaid".

The project is now in its second stage, the so-called Grant Agreement Development (GAD), which involves a series of meetings to produce documents, reports, send institutional documentation and prepare a preliminary design, which will work as a kind of pilot project. “This stage will take a few months, until the contract is signed and the project starts to be executed,” explains Thaissa.

Since a proposal was submitted to Unitaid, followed by the institutional documentation to meet the requirements of the financing entity, Fiotec is dedicated to the project with the mobilization of its financial and international logistics areas, in addition to the Project teams themselves.

Information from the Fiocruz portal.