SASNET: International Health, Karolinska Institutet

Postal address: Karolinska Institutet, Department of Public Health Sciences, Division of Global
Health – IHCAR, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
Visiting address: Nobels väg 9, Solna Campus
Web page: http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=12350&l=en

South Asia related research

The research at the Division of International Health focuses on health problems that are big in the world but small or non-existent in Sweden. Many know the division by its earlier acronym, IHCAR. It is part of the Department of Public Health Sciences. Since the start in 1984 it has developed extensive research in several fields within international health. Currently 25 researchers and more than 50 PhD students of many nationalities are divided into six research groups. Since 1984 a total of 67 PhD students successfully defended their theses.
This multidisciplinary division pursues research and education in collaboration with researchers in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. Through the experience of collaboration with global partners and stakeholders, the division aims at being a resource centre at the Karolinska Institutet, recognized for its comprehension of global health issues. Extensive collaboration exists within Karolinska Institutet and the division is an active stakeholder in the Karolinska International Research and Training (KIRT) Program and the Centre for Global Health (KICGH).
The division has seven research groups addressing the major health and health system problems in low and middle income countries.

The focus is on public health, health system and policy, clinical and translational research. Main public health problems that are addressed are: HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia, sexual and reproductive health, adolescents' health and development, child health, use of pharmaceuticals, consequences and causes of intentional and unintentional injuries and the Know-Do-Gap.

Educational Programmes

The division has well developed education programmes in Global Health at undergraduate, magister and doctoral level. A research school in Global Health is organised together with Umeå University. More information below.
In addition, the division collaborates closely with Gapminder foundation for developing evidence based information. More information below.

Research projects related to South Asia

Projects by Professor Emeritus Bo Lindblad

In August 2003 Bo Lindblad was awarded 90 000 SEK as a SASNET planning grant for this research programme on ”Pregnancy and Infancy in South Asia (PISA)”. See the full list of SASNET planning grants, August 2003.
In August 2006, Prof. Bo Lindblad received SEK 150 000 as another SASNET planning grant for organising an interdisciplinary workshop on ”Micronutrient Supplementation to Pregnant Women in South Asia." See the full list of SASNET planning grants 2006.
A symposium was held in Bangalore, India, 7–8 September 2006, with participants from St John’s Research Institute (part of St. John's National Academy of Health Sciences) in Bangalore, headed by Prof. Anura Kurpad; two community health researchers from Pune; Prof. Staffan Bergström, and Prof. Bo Lindblad from Karolinska Institutet; and Associate Professor Mikael Norman from the Department of Neonatology, Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge. From a Swedish viewpoint, the seminar was successful. Besides discussions with representatives from the Indian research institutions, Bo Lindblad and Mikael Norman were given the opportunity to lecture for the Indian Neonatal Society, about their research on Micronutrient Supplementation to Pregnant Women. Prof. Bergström discussed the extremely high mortality rate for pregnant women in India, and an agreement was made about joint research efforts by St John’s Medical College (also part of St.John's National Academy of Health Sciences) and Karolinska Institutet.
Later, Prof. Lindblad has established a close collaboration between IHCAR and St. Johns.

Bo Lindblad’s research on how folate/B12 deficiency among South Asian women may lead to vascular endothelial dysfunction has received wide international recognition with rising citation rates. In 2005 a research paper based on a study in Lahore supported by a SASNET planning grant was being published in the peer reviewed magazine Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica (2005:84:1055-1061). It was based on research by Bo Lindblad (photo), Professor Emeritus of International Child Health, Division of Global Health (IHCAR), Karolinska Institutet (KI), Stockholm; Dr Shakila Zaman, Dept. of Social and Preventive Peaditrics, King Edward Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan; and a number of other KI researchers (Helena Martin, Anna Mia Ekström, Arne Holmgren and Mikael Norman). The paper, entitled ”Folate, vitamin B12, and homocysteine levels in South Asian women with growth retarded fetuses” shows how in intraurerine growth, retardation folate levels were half that in cord blood and mothers as compared to local controls.
Two years later, a second paper on the same issue, again written by Bo Lindblad, Helena Martin, and Mikael Norman, was published in Pediatrics (2007:119: 1152-58). In the paper, entitled ”Endothelial function in Newborn Infants”, the researchers for the first time convincingly show the correlation of folate levels to vascular endothelial dysfunction (still there at 9 years of age being a known condition leading to arteriosclerosis, hypertension and stroke).
Recently, Prof. Lindblad’s hypothesis of folate/B12 deficiency in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia has also been supported by four new papers focusing on folate supplementation to pregnant women in Canada and the USA. Obviously being at the research front, Prof. Lidblad and his colleagues are now discussing how to proceed with research for supplementation in India and Pakistan. There is a need for both basic science, biochemical and genetics, as well as controlled supplementation studies in developing regions with known folate and B12 deficiency.

• The Research group on ”Epidemiology and Health systems research focusing on equity and gender” is a multi-disciplinary group aiming at contributing to improved health in low and middle income societies through research and research training. It has been headed by Dr. Eva Johansson, and focuses on TB, HIV/AIDS, health financing and insurance systems, public/private mix in health care, training of health personnel, maternal health, childhood studies and human rights. The group has competence in caring sciences, medicine, epidemiology, bio-statistics and health economics. The group is a scientific partner to socio-economic and demographic surveillance sites: FilaBavi in northern Vietnam and Palwa Field Laboratory in Central India. Several research and research training projects are on-going in these sites. The group has had collaborative projects in India, Vietnam, China, South Africa and Zambia. .

Professor Vinod Diwan (photo to the right) defended his doctoral thesis on ”Epidemiology in Context. Effectiveness of Health Care Interventions” at IHCAR in 1992, is also working at the Nordic School of Public Health, NHV, in Göteborg, and he chairs KIRT, Karolinska Institutet Research and Training Committee.
Prof. Diwan is Head of IHCAR’s programme on Health Systems and Policy research, involving research on Gender and Tuberculosis, identifying gender inequalities in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It has also been implemented in Vietnam, Zambia and South Africa. Part of the research has been located to the city of Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh state, India, where studies of a rural district, with a population of 60.000, has been carried out in collaboration with the RD Gardi Medical College. The project has included a socio-demographic surveillance system, where two persons from each village has been trained to collect data on births, deaths, migration and pregnancies. A 500 bed hospital serves as the teaching hospital.
In November 2005 Prof. Diwan received SEK 600 000 as a three-years (2006-08) Swedish Research Links grant for a project titled ” Equity and gender in tubercolosis control in high burden countries – from research to policy”. The Asian partner in the project is Biao Xu. More information on the Swedish Research Links grants 2005.

Prof. Diwan is also engaged in a project titled ” Information technology in Health: A geographic health management information system in Madhya Pradesh, India”. The project is carried out in collaboration with Ram Mohan Singh, National Center for Human Settlements and Environment in India. The project was given SEK 600 000 as a one-year grant from the the Swedish Research Links Programme in October 2006. It deals with the use of information technology for better health management in the central Indian province Madhya Pradesh. More information about the project.

In August 2007, Prof. Diwan received a SASNET planning grant for a new research project on ”Improving maternal health outcomes in Madhya Pradesh, India – bridging the gap between research and practice.” See the full list of SASNET planning grants 2007.
The projects aims at developing the already established collaboration between the RD Gardi Medical College in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, and IHCAR at Karolinska Institutet, to study maternal mortality and morbidity from the perspective that these women’s deaths and suffering could to a large extent be prevented.
The other collaborating partners on the Swedish side in the project are PhD Candidate Grethe Fochsen (more information below) and Ms. Linda Rydberg, currently working for the Women and Gender Equity Knowledge Network, which is part of the WHO’s Commission for Social Determinants of Health. Ms. Rydberg is planning to start her PhD studies in Madhya Pradesh during the year of 2008, and her role in the project is to contribute with the social and political sciences perspective. She will also coordinate the planning of a workshop to be held in the beginning of 2008.
The collaboration partners on the Indian side are Prof. V.K. Mahadik, medical director of the RD Gardi Medical College; and Dr. Kirti Deshpande, Assistant Professor in Community Medicine, RD Gardi Medical College.

In November 2007, Prof. Diwan was given SEK 1.5 million as a three-years grant (2008-10) from Sida's Developing Country Research Council (U-landsforskningsrådet), for this same project, now titled ”The Know-Do gap: a case study of the implementation of reproductive and child health policies in Madhya Pradesh, India”. More information about the Sida grants 2007.

In November 2008, Prof. Diwan was given SEK 400 000 as a one-year grant (2009) from Sida's Developing Country Research Council (U-landsforskningsrådet), for a project titled ”A randomized controlled trial: Improving adherence to Anti Retroviral Treatment in South India”. More information about the Sida grants 2008.

• Professor Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg (photo to the right) is currently professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet, visiting professor at R.D. Gardi Medical College, Ujjain India, and visiting faculty at Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) in Mumbai, India. Her research interest includes all aspects of antibiotic use and ways to improve it and relations between antibiotic use and resistance.
Current projects include e.g. studies in India on antibiotic use and resistance in children and adults and environmental aspects of antibiotic use, studies in Vietnam on antibiotic use and resistance in children and intervention studies to improve antibiotic use in child infections and in reproductive tract infections in women and studies on farmers’ use of antibiotics Sudan. She is a member of the international secretariat of ReAct action on antibiotic resistance and the steering committee of Strama, the Swedish Strategic Programme for Rational use of Antibiotics and Surveillance of Resistance. Since January 2007, she is also deputy chairperson of SASNET, and the coordinator at KI of one of the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window Lot 13 programmes for India, and scientific coordinator at KI for public health collaboration with India.
She is working on several South Asia related research projects.

In June 2006, she received SEK 1.4 million for a project titled ”HIV and STI infections among Female Sex Workers in Lahore, Pakistan – prevalence, resistance, knowledge and attitudes – a health systems perspective” from the the Sida programme Support to HIV/AIDS research. More information.
Project abstract: The aim is to establish a network between three institutions of Sweden and Pakistan, IHCAR, CONTECH International Health Consultants in Lahore, and Fatima Jinnah Medical College, also in Lahore, Pakistan. The latter is a medical school for women. A study will be done to assess the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among female sex workers of Lahore, Pakistan. Respondent Driven Sampling will be adopted to select female sex workers for interview. The study will help to assess the magnitude of sexually transmitted infection as well as to develop a health communication program for female sex workers. The study will serve as a basis for future studies like measuring the antibiotic resistance while using the syndromic management of STIs, assessing the knowledge, attitude and practices of health care providers and policy analysis of STIs. All of this together would result in a major policy dialogue. In the subsequent studies, another institution i.e. Örebro University Hospital, Department of Microbiology will also join the network.

Prof. Stålsby Lundborg is also engaged in a project titled ”Antibiotics as environment pollutants and resistance in waters in rural India – relation to antibiotic management”. It is carried out in collaboration with R.D. Gardi Medical College in India. The project was given SEK 1 425 000 as a three-years project grant (2007–09) from the the Swedish Research Council in November 2006. The project also received SEK 600 000 as an additional three-years grant as Swedish Research Links Programme in October 2006.
It deals with the fact that antibiotic resistance is an emerging global public health threat. Morbidity and mortality are substantial especially for poor women and children. Little research has been done in relation to the public health problem of antibiotics in waters and its implications for resistance. The overall purpose is to assess environmental aspects and public health consequences of antibiotic management in rural India. Long-term aim is to disseminate findings in collaboration with policymakers to improve antibiotic use and antibiotic waste management in order to contain resistance and maintain the possibility to treat infections in need of antibiotics. More information about the project.

On 21 October 2009, Prof. Stålsby Lundborg received SEK 2 250 000 as a three-years project grant (2010–10) from the Swedish Research Council, for a continuation of the above-mentioned project on antibiotics resistance. The project is now called ”Antibiotic pollutants in waters and resistance in rural India – Interventions to improve antibiotic resistance management”. More information.

• PhD candidate Mohsin Saeed Khan from Islamabad is supervised by Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg. He is working with the project about HIV and STI infections among Female Sex Workers in Lahore, Pakistan, presented above. Results from the studies were presented with a poster presentation at the conference on current Swedish development research, organised in Uppsala 27–29 May 2008. The conference, “Meeting Global Challenges in Research Cooperation”, was organised on behalf of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) by the Centre for Sustainable Development in Uppsala. Researchers and development professionals were invited to gather and discuss key themes at the frontiers of research and global development issuess. More information about the conference.
During the fall 2009, Mr. Saeed Khan has spent his time at IHCAR in Stockholm, finalising his PhD thesis that will be defended in June 2010.

Since 2009, Mr. Saeed Khan is a member of SASNET’s South Asian Reference Group. More information.
As such, he participated in the SASNET funded conference on ”Women and Migration in South Asia – Health and Social Consequences”, held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in February 2009. More information.

On Tuesday 24 November 2009, while being in Sweden working on his doctoral thesis, Mr. Khan visited the SASNET root node office in Lund, along with another member in the South Asian Reference Group, Prof. Kumudu Wijewardena. The purpose was to have informal discussions with Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund about the future direction of SASNET from 2010. More information.

• The multidisciplinary research group “Health Systems and Policy” (HSP) at IHCAR deals with individuals’ perceptions of health and health care, health seeking behaviour and at the macro level policymaking and how the system meets needs and demands of consumers of care. Action research with robust evaluations have been core activities in studies in Africa, Asia and Europe often conducted in consortia with other research teams. Method development includes multifaceted interventions in public and private sectors for improved quality of care evaluated in randomised control trials with health facilities as study units. The basis of any health system - the household-is being studied in relation to management of children with fever. Malaria case management is studied including the interface between consumers and providers as well as drugs and resistance. The group is led by Göran Tomson, Professor in International Health System Research (photo to the right). It has an extensive international network especially in Africa and Asia. Swedish collaboration includes the Dept. of Political Science, Lund University and Stockholm School of Economics. European collaborative institutions include Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Department of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health of University of Heidelberg and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Several projects and courses (senior decision makers, PhD and MPH students) aim at more evidence based health policymaking. More information on the Health Systems and Policy Research group.

• Dr. Fauziah Rabbani, Associate Professor at the Dept. of Community Health Sciences at AKU (photo to the right) is a member of the research group. She carries out a sandwich PhD training at IHCAR, supervised by Prof. Tomson. Her special interest is in health systems development and health care administration. She has served as WHO technical advisor and grant recipient of WHO UNISOL, which is a WHO network grant of ‘Universities in Solidarity for the health of the disadvantaged’. She is member of various national and international committees and networks, attended numerous international conferences and has many peer reviewed publications to credit. Together with Prof. Tomson she is trying to evolve a Swedish-South Asian Network on health administration and management training and research. A project to be realised through collaboration between IHCAR, the Medical Management Centre at Karolinska Institutet, and the School of Business at Stockholm University on the Swedish side, and with the departments of Community Health Sciences and Medicine at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi on the South Asian (Pakistani) side.
In August 2005 Prof. Tomson and Dr. Rabbani received a SASNET planning grant for an educational project on ”Networking in research and training for better health administration and management (NHART)”. More information on the August 2005 SASNET grants.
Project abstract: In low income countries research and training in health systems and good governance has been identified as a major challenge in achieving millennium development goals. Medical universities and hospitals are an important but often neglected component of health system. Research and training is needed to develop balanced set of performance measures and in use of information systems to continually and simultaneously assess clinical outcomes, financial performance, patient satisfaction and provide this feedback to all parties. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is one such performance management tool.
With AKU’s MSc in Health Policy and Management Program a formal networking for health systems development and management research training between Swedish partners and AKU will open new avenues for health administration and policy in South Asia. Moreover AKUH has elaborate computerized information technology and operational systems to improve quality of care for patients but there is a need to integrate these systems from a professional and managerial perspective. Therefore AKUH presents a good study site to test various performance measurement and management models in health care administration.

As part of the educational programme an International three day workshop on ”Health Administration: Strategic Planning and Performance Management” was held at Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, Pakistan, 22–24 November 2006. It was organized by the Department of Community Health Sciences, Dept. of Medicine and Medical Director’s Office at Aga Khan University. The aims of the workshop were; to understand how to develop vision and mission statements, get familiar with methods for conducting organizational assessment and stakeholder analysis, learn to develop outlines of a strategic plan, appreciate some experiences of strategic planning in health care organizations through case studies and be informed about use and application of Balanced Scorecard as a strategic performance management tool in health care organizations. Participants came not only from Pakistan but also from Afghanistan and East Africa (on the photo above). Read a full report from the workshop (as a pdf-file)

• Anna Mia Ekström is an MD specializing in Infectious Diseases, holding a full-time research position financed by the Swedish Medical Council for research on global HIV and TB epidemiology. She did her PhD in Medical Epidemiology at KI and her MPH training at Harvard School of Public Health focussing on Epidemiology, Biostatistics and International Health. She also has a Diploma in ”Health in Low-Income Countries”. Her main research interests are in HIV epidemiology, TB, health development and gender issues, currently with special emphasis on evaluating the feasibility of large-scale antiretroviral treatment in low-income countries. She is involved in projects in Uganda, India, Tanzania and Eastern Europe.

• Ayesha de Costa (photo to the right) is an MD who has trained and worked in India. She has worked as a resident at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and with the Danish International Development Assisstance (basic health services programme) in Madhya Pradesh, India.She has worked with drug policy and geographic information systems for health in Central India. Her interests include health systems, access to essential medicines and ethics. She is now a PhD student and is researching in the area of the private health sector in India.

• Syed Farid-ul-Hasnain is a medical doctor holding masters degree in Epidemiology from Aga Khan University Pakistan and has ECFMG certification (MD) from USA. He is a faculty in ‘Population and Reproductive Health' Program at the Department of Community Health Sciences the Aga Khan University, with major involvement in undergraduate and graduate teaching. He is also involve in facilitating & directing short courses on ‘Reproductive Health Research' and participating in ongoing research activities pertaining to Reproductive Health program. His main interest is in adolescent reproductive health and gender issues. He is now a PhD student at IHCAR and his research topic is Addressing life skills in adolescents: Karachi, Pakistan.

• Grethe Fochsen is a RN and has a Master degree in Public Health Sciences from Karolinska Institutet. She has previous worked on a research project at Department of Nursing regarding health care personnel's work environment. On Friday 14 December 2007, she defended her PhD thesis titled ”Encounters with power: health care seeking and medical encounters in tuberculosis care: experiences from Ujjain District, India”. In the thesis, Grethe Fochsen examines health care seeking and medical encounters in the context of TB care in a rural district in Madhya Pradesh. More specifically, the study focuses on how relations of power between health care providers and patients are created, altered and maintained during medical encounters in a diversified health system. More information.

• A collaborative research training project with a study of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infections in Peshawar, Pakistan ha been led by Associate Professor Anneka Ehrnst, Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, KI.

• A collaboration in studies on antenatal prediction of low birth weight and some factors that detarmine birthweight has been working between IHCAR, KI and the Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore, India. It has resulted in a PhD sandwich training of the present chair of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Unitin Vellore, Dr Matthews Mathai, who is now involved in a collaborative study with IHCAR on Preganacy Related Morbidity and Mortality. Mathai defended his doctoral thesis at KI in 1999. It was entitled “Fetal growth in India: studies on antenatal prediction of low birthweight and some factors that determine birthweight” – see abstract.
Dr Elisabeth Matthai (photo to the left) at the same school was also involved in a sandwich PhD training at IHCAR on Pregancy related morbidity, supervised by Prof. Staffan Bergström. She defended her doctoral thesis, entitled ”Genital and Urinary Tract Infections in Pregnancy in Southern India. Diagnosis, managhement and impact on perinatal outcome” at KI on 15 December 2004. Read the abstract.

Among other Pakistani PhD candidates connected to Karolinska Institutet are: Faridul Hasnain from AKU, a student of Community Health, supervised by Dr. Eva Johansson; and Zarah Hasan from AKU, a student of Tubercolosis.

South Asia related educational courses:

Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window Programme scholarship programme

A large number of Indian students, PhD candidates, post-docs and academic staff has come to Karolinska Institutet during the academic year 2009-10, as scholarship holders through the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window mobility programme Lot 15, coordinated by Lund University. This programme was announced in 2008, and out of a total mobility of 320 persons, 20 Indian students, researchers and academic staff were selected to come specially to Karolinska Institutet. Out of them, 5 are Masters students, 7 PhD candidates, 4 post-docs, and 3 academic staff. Another five people have gone from Karolinska Institutet to Indian universities, out of them 2 Masters students and 3 academic staff. More information about the EMECW programme lot 15 (from 2009 renamed to be one out of four programmes under the mobility lot 13). Prof. Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg is the local coordinator fro the programme at Karolinska Institutet.

Global Health courses and other programmes with relevance to South Asia

A 7.5 ECTS credits course in Global Health is arranged every semester for three weeks at KI, and then two weeks abroad – in East Africa, Cuba, Iran, India or Pakistan. The course is run in collaboration between IHCAR, the Dept. of Public Health Sciences, and the Department of Nursing at Karolinska Institutet. It is open to students at Karolinska Institutet in the Medical programme, Midwifery programme, Nursing programme, Dental programme, Biomedical laboratory programme, Physiotherapy programme, Occupational therapy programme, and the Biomedical programme. In South Asia, the students can choose to do the field work at Karolinska’s two main collaboration partner institutions: The Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan; and Trivandrum Medical College (TMC) in Thiruvananthapuram, India. More information on the Global Health course.
Course coordinator: Dr. Birgitta Rubensson, phone: +46 (0)8 524 833 89.
The courses in Global Health has been running twice a year since 1996. The initiative originally came from Prof. Hans Rosling, at that time working at the Unit for International Child Health, Uppsala University but soon after changing over to the Division of International health (IHCAR), Department of Public Health Sciences at KI. Earlier, during the 1990s, Prof. Shenoy worked together with Prof. Hans Rosling in a project on Cassava Toxicity, funded by WHO and Sida/SAREC. The Global Health course was a side effect of their collaboration.
As former Head of IHCAR, Prof. Bengt Höjer was also instrumental in realising the collaboration programme.
More than 500 medical students from KI have received training in Global Health only at TMC. The students coming to Kerala mostly has had a background in Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedicine, and they stay for two weeks. Prof. K.T. Shenoy, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kerala, has been the person in charge of the collaboration from the start on the Indian side. Read a SASNET report from TMC, November 2007.

Prof. Vinod Diwan at IHCAR organises Sida funded courses in Global Medicine for Junior Hospital Doctors (ST-läkare) on behalf of the Center for Public Health, CeFAM (a collaboration between Karolinska Institutet and the county council of Stockholm). The courses has dealt with diseases like malaria, TB and AIDS, and take place either in Ethiopia or in India (four months at R.D.Gardi Medical College, in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. More information on the training in Ujjain (in Swedish only)

Torkel Falkenberg is Professor of Pharmacology at the Center for Studies of Complementary Medicine (CAM).
Prof. Falkenberg is Head of the Research Group on ”Drug Utilisation and Complementary & Alternative Medicine”.
The Center is involved in research, development and education related to traditional medicine (TM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and integrative medicine. Staff members at the center collaborate with a wide range of professions including professionals from conventional medicine and TM/CAM, health care planners and decision makers nationally and internationally. The mission is to promote the development of evidence based health care systems in which appropriate conventional medicine practices and TM/CAM practices are integrated on equal terms. Such integrative health care programes are sensitive to the patients' freedom of choice and safety and acknowledges health and wellness of the whole person including biological, psychological, social and spiritual aspects, when relevant. More information on the International research.

European Master of Science International Health Degree Programme

IHCAR is one of eight European institutions awarding degrees in a new European Master of Science International Health Degree Programme. The programme is part of tropEd, a network of European institutions for higher education, in existence since 1996 and collaborating closely with institutions in Asia, Africa, and the Americas in providing postgraduate education and training opportunities.
The European Master of Science Programme in International Health is a one year, full-time study programme taught in English. The main objective of the programme is to raise awareness of current global health concerns. Students become qualified to identify and critically analyse key factors shaping the health and well-being of populations in low- and middle-income countries and to formulate effective and appropriate responses to complex health-related issues. Six possible study tracks are offered for this degree and reflect the strengths of the consortium institutions: Tropical Medicine and Disease Control; Health Systems, Health Policy and Management; Sexual and Reproductive Health; Child Health; Health Research Methods; and Health in Emergencies.
Each study track begins with a 3 month core course from September to December. Core courses provide a common basis of the main subject areas for all students. Students receive 20 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credit points upon successful completion of their core course. More information on the European Master of Science International Health Degree Programme.
Contact person: Anna-Lena Paulsson

Linnaeus palme International Exchange programmes

An exchange programme was introduced in the year 2000–01, through the Linnaeus-Palme Foundation International Students and Teachers Exchange Program, between Karolinska Institutet Medical University; Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi, Pakistan (AKU); and Thiruvananthapuram Medical College (TMC), Kerala, India.
The programmes includes both undergraduates and teachers in the medical field, as well as students and teachers in the field of nursing and midwifery. Official exchange programs has been established for the Study programme in Medicine ("Läkarprogrammet") and Nursing ("Sjuksköterskeprogrammet") in Pakistan and in India for the study programmes in Medicine and in Midwifery, ("Barnmorskeprogrammet"). Exchange regularly takes place, even in times of political turmoil in the region.
The collaboration between KI and TMC was further stabilised after a meeting between representatives of KI and the Chief Minister of Kerala was held in November 2004. It was then proposed that KI doctors should be sent for clinical courses/workshops and carry out the clinical part of KI’s postgraduate courses in TMC. A new International Office in TMC coordinates these activities as a single window clearance system.
Coordinator for the undergraduate medical students and teachers: Professor Bo Lindblad (concerning Pakistan) and Associate Professor Sanjeevi Carani at the Center for Molecular Medicine (concerning India).
Coordinator for the undergraduate Midwifery students and teachers with India: Anna Hjelmstedt
Coordinator for the undergraduate Nursing students and teachers: Helen Conte
Information about the Linnaeus Palme grants 2009, given by Swedish International Programme Office for Education and Training (Internationella programkontoret).

Gapminder

Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at IHCAR, is one of the strongest personalities at IHCAR.
He was the driving force behind the creation of Gapminder, originally a non-profit venture based at Malmö that launched an animated computer programme using the so-called Trendalyzer software. – turning time series of development statistics into attractive moving graphics. A first project was the creation of a World Health Development Chart – in collaboration with WHO – showing the relation between the rates of child survival and GDP per capita during the last 50 years in all the countries of the World. Since 2003, Gapminder – now a registered foundation based in Stockholm – has developed through a collaboration with United Nations Division of Statistic and the UNDP, visualizing the fulfillment of the millennium development goals in the yearly Human Development Reports directly on the Internet. Since 2001, funding for the project has been given by Sida.
On 16 March 2007, Google acquired Gapminder’s Trendalyzer. Google intends to improve and scale up Trendalyzer, and make it freely available to those who seek access to statistics. The Stockholm-based Gapminder Foundation on the other hand will continue to spearhead the use of new technology for data animations. The goal is to promote a fact-based worldview by bringing statistical story-telling to new levels. In collaboration with producers of accurate statistics that are eager to give the public free access to databases, Gapminder hopes to recruit and inspire many users of public statistics. More information.

SASNET conference on The role of South Asia in the internationalisation of higher education in Sweden

In November 2006, Karolinska Institutet hosted a workshop on ”The role of South Asia in the internationalisation of higher education in Sweden” in collaboration with SASNET and the Swedish Institute. Prof. Bo Lindblad at IHCAR (also a member of SASNET’s board) was one of the main organisers of the workshop, that took place at Nobel Forum 28-29 November.
Full information about the workshop.

It was inaugurated by Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson (photo to the right), President of Karolinska Institutet, and after that Associate Professor Elias Arnér (photo to the left), Dean of Post graduate education, gave a introductory presentattion about KI’s International activities. Read Dr. Arnér’s presentation at the workshop
(as a pdf-file)

Professor Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg and PhD Candidate Mohsin Saeed Khan gave a presentation about Karolinska Institutet’s experiences from the PhD sandwich programme with Pakistan, in the session titled ”Recruitment of South Asian students in hard sciences in Sweden”. Read Dr. Stålsby Lundborg’s presentation at the workshop (as a pdf-file)
Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg was also an invited speaker in the final panel discussion titled ”Best strategies for marketing Higher Swedish Education in South Asia, and for sending students to Higher Education in South Asia?”

Back to Research

Search the SASNET Web Index

SASNET - Swedish South Asian Studies Network/Lund University
Address: Scheelevägen 15 D, SE-223 70 Lund, Sweden
Phone: +46 46 222 73 40
Webmaster: Lars Eklund
Last updated 2010-02-02

SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

Other departments/units at Karolinska Institutet Medical University

Division of Global health (IHCAR), Karolinska Institutet Medical University, Stockholm: