8 minute read
Insights
NOVEMBER
Promising Drug Combination Treatment Against Parasitic Worm Infections In a phase III clinical trial, researchers at Swiss TPH successfully gathered encouraging data to demonstrate higher efficacy of co-administration of ivermectin-albendazole in combating soil-transmitted helminthiasis. The findings were published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
→ People with low incomes particularly suffered in the pandemic. → Soil-transmitted helminths affect one in five people around the world.
People from Low-Income Households Severely Affected by Pandemic The COVCO-Basel study by Swiss TPH investigated the health-related and societal effects of the COVID–19 pandemic in the Basel region. Results from the study showed that people coming from low-income households are more severely affected by the pandemic, and that rates of depression among this population group have risen.
DECEMBER
Elimination on the Horizon: Decrease of Schistosomiasis by Nearly 60% In a study by Swiss TPH, researchers found that the prevalence of schistosomiasis among school-aged children decreased by nearly 60% between 2000 and 2019 due to large-scale drug administration and social and economic development of the African continent. The findings offer hope of elimination for this major neglected tropical disease. The study was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
→ Schistosomiasis is a parasitic worm infection that is a major public health problem.
Lujain Alchalabi, Master’s Student in Epidemiology at Swiss TPH
INSIGHTS
A New Home for Swiss TPH
Around 700 Swiss TPH employees and students have moved into our new headquarters “Belo Horizonte” in Allschwil, Switzerland. Located within an emerging life-science cluster, our new building allows us to work more collaboratively across our three fields of expertise – research, education and services – to improve health globally.
Belo Horizonte
The new Swiss TPH headquarters has five floors of innovative working areas and laboratory places, as well as seminar rooms, a library and cafeteria. The modern building presents many new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange across departments to improve the health and well-being of people.
Belo Café
Swiss TPH’s cafeteria, Belo Café, is open to both staff and the public. Run by ZFV, the cafeteria provides fresh and regional options with a focus on sustainable and fair trade production.
Biobanks
Large population cohorts with biobanks (long-term studies in which healthy participants donate biological samples) are considered the gold standard for investigating causes of chronic diseases, such as diabetes. The Swiss TPH biobanks store over half a million biological samples such as blood, urine and stool, in refrigerators at – 80°C. Belo Horizonte has the storage capacity for over 1.5 million samples and storage under liquid nitrogen (at – 196°C), enabling the quality of the samples to be maintained. In order to remain internationally competitive and continue to be at the forefront of modern public health research, Switzerland needs an even larger, long-term study with around 100,000 people. Swiss TPH is a Swiss leader in the field of cohort and environmental research and now has the research infrastructure needed to meet these demands. Approximately 50,000 analyses of dengue virus, Zika virus, yellow fever or parasitic worm infections are performed annually at the Swiss TPH Diagnostic Centre. The samples are sent by physicians, hospitals and laboratories from all over Switzerland and surrounding countries. The Diagnostic Centre is the National Reference Centre of Switzerland for Imported Human Parasitic Diseases. Swiss TPH places an emphasis on the development and validation of new analytical methods and the continuous improvement of existing diagnostic tests.
Multi-functional Workspaces
Belo Horizonte offers a mix of individual and co-working spaces, retreat areas, meeting rooms and project zones. The new working environment promotes interdisciplinary exchange, provides an office landscape that fosters creativity, opportunities for interaction, and accommodates the need for retreat and concentration - depending on the work being pursued.
The laboratories are located on the first and second floors and distributed horizontally, guaranteeing first-class research according to the latest safety standards. The size of the laboratories allows Swiss TPH to work on different pathogens simultaneously, positioning us as a leader in basic research on infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. In the new Bio Safety Level 3 (BSL– 3) laboratories, Swiss TPH conducts research on highly infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, Buruli ulcer, Chagas and other neglected tropical diseases, as well as topics such as antibiotic resistance and vaccine development. Because of the risk of infection, activities are only possible in high-security laboratories that require additional safety precautions. Now, we are able to work at the cutting edge of research in a safe way in order to contribute to key global health issues.
*The building plan represents the longitudinal cross section of Belo Horizonte. Some elements displayed are actually in the back vs. front of the image that you see here (e.g. the library is behind the seminar rooms). The building plan is courtesy of architects Kunz und Mösch. Swiss TPH has a specialised vector biology unit, with cutting-edge bio-safety facilities. The new mosquito breeding and laboratories enable research with infectious mosquitoes and invasive species such as the Asian tiger mosquito. The mosquito labs enable entomologists to advance research into the physiology, behaviour and ecology of disease-carrying insects, as well as the development of new products to control and monitor them. In addition, mosquitoes can be experimentally infected with malaria parasites under the highest safety standards so that we can better understand the transmission of this disease.
Library
Our library has a working area with 24 places for students with about 600 books in the open access area. More than 10,000 additional books are located in the closed stacks; most of them can be borrowed. The library offers a collaborative learning opportunity for Swiss TPH staff and students and the public.
Seminar Rooms
Swiss TPH offers bachelor, masters, doctoral and postgraduate programs as well as continuous education and short courses. Our new building has six seminar rooms for courses ranging from epidemiology and infection biology to health care management and clinical research. We have an annual enrollment of 620 students in postgraduate programmes, 180 PhD students and 40 MSc students from over 50 nations.
From “Tropeli” to Swiss TPH
Almost 80 years ago, the Swiss Tropical Institute was founded and started its journey at Socinstrasse in Basel. Since then, the institute has grown continuously and is known today as the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) after the integration of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine of the University of Basel in 2010.
To accommodate the increasing number of staff and students, seven properties on and around Socinstrasse in Basel were rented over the decades. Swiss TPH was bursting at the seams and creativity was needed to accommodate new employees. It was clear to the director at the time, Marcel Tanner, that a solution was needed in which all employees could be united under one roof.
In 2015, the parliaments of the cantons of BaselStadt and Basel-Landschaft agreed to a joint treaty of Swiss TPH, thus laying the foundation for the future of Swiss TPH: the new headquarters “Belo Horizonte” in the BaseLink life science cluster in Allschwil, Switzerland. One year later, the Basel-based architectural firm Kunz und Mösch won the competition for the new Swiss TPH building and the construction process began.
Just two years after the groundbreaking ceremony in June 2019, the building was officially handed over to Swiss TPH in September 2021. At the end of 2021, staff and students began to move in and the first courses were held in the new seminar rooms in early 2022. Swiss TPH officially arrived in its new home.
The building includes attractive multi-space offices and modern laboratories, as well as biobanks, seminar rooms, a library and a cafeteria open to the public. In the words of the Director Jürg Utzinger, “Belo Horizonte is a quantum leap for Swiss TPH, allowing us to even better realise our mission of making the world a healthier place”.
Belo Horizonte
The multifunctional building Belo Horizonte (Portuguese for “beautiful horizon”) brings 700 Swiss-based employees and students of Swiss TPH under one roof. The Centre for Tropical and Travel Medicine will remain in the city of Basel.
On an area of about 13,000 square meters distributed over five floors, there are 725 workplaces and 150 laboratory places. In addition to a cafeteria, the facilities include a library and seminar rooms. The building was designed by Basel architects Kunz und Mösch.
The new Swiss TPH building cost a total of CHF 127 million: CHF 113 million for the building and CHF 14 million for the interior. Financing comes from the cantons of BaselStadt and Basel-Landschaft (CHF 40 million each), the federal government (CHF 23.6 million), Swiss TPH’s own resources (CHF 18.4 million) and the R. Geigy Foundation (CHF 5 million).
→ Swiss TPH’s new headquarters includes attractive multi-space offices and creative working areas located throughout the building.
→ The library offers a collaborative learning opportunity for Swiss TPH staff, students and the public.
“I came from Palestine to Switzerland to pursue a PhD in Epidemiology with a focus on Biostatistics. My PhD is on mental health, with the aim to shed light on effective primary healthcare approaches to shape healthy minds and habits. I would like to apply this knowledge to Palestine, so that I can make a positive impact on improving health.”
Ranin Darkhawaja, PhD Student in Epidemiology, Swiss TPH
