UI tropical disease researcher Mary Wilson, MD, studies leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted through the bite of a sand fly. Also known as black fever, leishmaniasis is the world’s second-leading parasitic killer.
Changing Lives
around the World
In the face of epidemics, natural disasters, and other health-related misfortunes, University of Iowa Health Care plays an important role in changing medicine, changing lives around the globe.
This quest takes many forms, including research, volunteerism, education, and outreach that benefit diverse and often underserved populations.
In the laboratory, dozens of UI scientists are researching the mysteries of complex diseases like HIV, SARS, avian flu, infectious diseases, and blinding eye diseases that have been particularly devastating for many countries.
Among the tropical diseases under intense study is visceral leishmaniasis, also known as black fever—the second-largest parasitic killer in the world.
Many UI Health Care staff members travel with humanitarian organizations to help impoverished people in need of treatment and help educate local physicians about new and better ways of providing health care for their own patients. Examples include otolaryngologists and nurses who have treated children with cleft lip and palate, and ophthalmologists who have helped address serious conditions affecting the eye.
Several global telemedicine projects are under way, and UI Health Care sponsors several programs of its own, including a new effort focused on an emergency medicine shortage of training in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The UI-based Ponseti International Association is making non-surgical clubfoot treatment and teaching available to children and health care providers in over 50 countries. The goal is to make the non-surgical clubfoot method—which was developed by UI orthopaedic surgeon Ignacio Ponseti, MD—available to any child, anywhere in the world, born with the crippling condition.
Many UI medical students and resident physicians participate in training rotations that take them to underserved communities in the United States and abroad.
By answering the call, the people and programs at University of Iowa Health Care are solving problems, improving lives, and winning hearts and minds around the globe.