South America Hub – Brazil
đź“ŤRio de Janeiro, Brazil
This Hub has made considerable headway in community engagement within Brazil. The team engaged with the favela of Complexo da MarĂ©, a socially vulnerable community in Rio de Janeiro consisting of 140,000 inhabitants. An intervention combining communication, surveillance, and telehealth, with a strong community engagement component, was able to reduce the COVID-19 mortality and increase case detection in this large Rio de Janeiro community. These findings show that investment in community-based interventions may reduce mortality and improve pandemic control in vulnerable communities from LMICs.Â
The team have also established an ongoing follow-up programme that analysed data on approximately 800 post-COVID confirmed cases until December 2023. Research in this community of this magnitude has never been previously undertaken. The team’s community activities have been exceptionally valuable to the community; not only has there been an increase in the awareness of COVID-19 amongst the population, but also managed to increase the accessibility to vaccines. To that end, a substantial number of individuals have received their COVID-19 vaccine (93.4% coverage with 2 doses in adults in the community).  Â
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Fernando Bozza
Hub Lead, Chair of Executive Board
Dr Bozza coordinates the critical care and infectious disease research on the largest integrated hospital network in Latin America (IDOR-Rede D’Or São Luiz). The network is present in ten Brazilian States and comprises 63 hospitals.
Dr Fernando Bozza’s research activities involve clinical and translational research on severe emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and the neuro-cognitive consequences of severe infections. He has also acted in the consolidation of collaborative clinical research initiatives in Brazil and Latin America, such as the Brazilian Intensive Care Research Network, where he was the founder and first president.
Dr Bozza’s research group has made significant contributions to managing emerging infectious diseases, including studies on dengue, Zika, Chikungunya, yellow fever, and COVID-19. Bozza has more than 250 peer reviewed papers, including publications in high-impact journals such as NEJM, JAMA, Nature, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Emerging infectious diseases, etc.
Furthermore, Dr Bozza is grantee of the ICODA (International COVID-19 Data Alliance) Challenge, supported by Health Data Research UK (HDRUK) the and Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, being Principal Investigator of the EFFECT-Brazil project, which aims to evaluate the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in Brazil using statistical and machine learning models. His team comprises biomedical researchers, physicians, epidemiologists, engineers, and statisticians.
Areas of experise
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Publications
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Read research from this Hub
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News from the South America Hub
Children hospitalised with Omicron did not have a higher risk of experiencing long-term health issues compared to other infections, finds latest study
A new study finds that children hospitalised with initial COVID-19 variant showed more signs of dermatological, fatigue, gastrointestinal, sensory, and sleep issues, as well as behavioural and emotional problems
Researchers start new investigation into Long COVID core outcome set
A group of researchers started this project with the aims of understanding what are the core outcomes for patients living with Long COVID.
ISARIC COVID-19 clinical database passes the half million patient records mark
On its 10th anniversary, University of Oxford’s ISARIC (International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium) demonstrates the crucial role of global preparedness and collaboration for advancing knowledge on infectious disease pandemics.