By Arthur Barbalho
Cintia da Hora Photos

More than 63 thousand people have already enrolled in the course “Emerging respiratory viruses, including Covid-19”, made available by the Laboratory of Technological Innovation in Health at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (LAIS / UFRN) in partnership with the Pan-American Organization. American Health Organization (PAHO). The module has students in 45 countries, from all continents.

The data were made available by the support service of the Virtual Learning Environment of the Unified Health System (AVASUS), a training platform mediated by technologies developed by LAIS, and which gathers courses for the training of health professionals and managers, in addition to the public generally.

The overall figures are even higher. This is because there are almost 8 thousand students who did not declare the region where they live at the time of registration. Adding to these, there are more than 71 thousand people, which can also expand the data by country.

According to the AVASUS team, most of the students in the course are concentrated in Latin American countries, with Brazil leading the statistics. There are 63,209 spread across all cities in Brazil. In the region, nations such as Paraguay (75), Argentina (53) and Bolivia (53) stand out.

In the United States, 61 people have already taken the Covid-19 course. In Europe, the majority of those enrolled are in Portugal (51).

It is noteworthy, however, countries where the Latin language is not dominant. These are the cases of Ireland (7), Switzerland (5), Japan (4), Norway (4), Antigua and Barbuda (1) and the Philippines (1). In Oceania, the course has students in Australia (3) and New Caledonia (1).

In Africa, the three countries that have enrolled are Portuguese-speaking nations, namely Angola (3), Mozambique (3), Cape Verde (2) and Guinea-Bissau (1).

In Brazil, the course reached more than 53% of the cities
The course “Emerging respiratory viruses, including Covid-19” already has students in all states of Brazil and in the Federal District. In total, 2,986 municipalities have at least one student enrolled in the module, which is equivalent to 53.61% of Brazilian cities.

The states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the main epicenters of Covid-19 in the country, have the highest enrollment, with 9,129 and 6,068 students, respectively. Following is Rio Grande do Norte (5,543), followed by Minas Gerais (4,526) and Bahia (4,138).

“Figures show contribution to global health”
According to Professor Ricardo Valentim, LAIS coordinator, the data presented show the contribution of UFRN, through LAIS, to awareness actions in the scope of global health. “The numbers show that the course has at least one student on each continent in the world. That is, this course has contributed to global health in a general context. It is a very important milestone for Brazil, which addresses the issue of human training in health to face the coronavirus ”, he said.

The professor also pointed out that the course made it possible to create a training trail, with other educational resources on the theme of coronavirus being developed in sequence by LAIS. “Five other courses were created that deal with issues such as patient management, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), patient monitoring, infection prevention and control, importance of physical isolation, and finally, about the rapid test . These are courses that will have great repercussions in the formative process, and that place Brazil in a leading position in this regard, reaching the whole world with these productions ”, he said.