Global Grant – Rotary International

The Venezuelan Science Incubator was awarded funding for the project “Diagnostics and Treatment of Infectious Diseases in Barquisimeto, Venezuela under the Rotary Global Grant No. 2015574. This project provided funding for the acquisition and installment of medical equipment and reagents necessary to establish a molecular diagnostics laboratory for infectious diseases in Venezuela.

The reemergence of arthropod-borne and vaccine-preventable diseases, along with the abandonment of all epidemiological surveillance and treatment programs, have turned Venezuela into a fertile ground for infectious disease epidemics with a documented spill-over effect to neighboring countries, representing a regional health threat to the Americas.

Essential steps in addressing this health emergency include prompt and precise diagnosis and treatment, continuous epidemiological surveillance, and educational campaigns on preventing medicine. Molecular diagnosis is a valuable tool with virtually no development in the country. These modern techniques significantly increase diagnostic precision and speed, and they can also prevent unnecessary expenses and harm related to misdiagnosis and delayed treatment.

Throughout our research work, the Venezuelan Science Incubator has been able to directly verify that there is no center in the region that performs the molecular diagnosis of infectious diseases, which is why patients, who require this type of procedure, go to centers located in other regions of the country and incur all the difficulties and costs that this entails. In this sense, through this project, patients in our region and neighboring regions will have closer access to a high-quality molecular diagnostic center with all the necessary biosecurity conditions. Likewise, it will contribute greatly to reducing the workload of other centers, thus contributing to ease the burden on the country’s public health system.

At The Venezuelan Science Incubator (VSI), we study the treatment of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) using translational science: the practical application of scientific knowledge developed in the laboratory to provide health care solutions for the most vulnerable populations in the country.