USA, Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Haiti, Australia, Bolivia, Perú, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Philippines, Latvia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Russia, China, Argentina, Ecuador, United Kingdom, Germany, Seychelles, Slovakia, Cuba, India, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Venezuela, Norway, Singapore, Israel, Mexico, Macedonia, Belgium, Cameroon, Guatemala, Netherlands, Paraguay, Austria, Panama, Honduras, Ireland, Lebanon, South Africa.

Immediately after I returned to Riga I was able to utilize the knowledge obtained during the Gorgas Course to update our policies and procedures for the control of infectious diseases in travelers and migrants.

Juris Perevoscikovs, M.D.
Director of Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Latvian Ministry of Health
Riga, Latvia

I thought you might be interested in this article I had written for the Singaporean doctors' newsletter.  I hope that this will raise the awareness of the course in my country and that you will get many more participants from Singapore soon.  Thank you for organizing such a wonderful tropical medicine course.

Li Yang Hsu
National University of Singapore
Singapore

Let me tell you how gratefull I am to have been given the opportunity to participate in the Gorgas Course in Lima and many thanks to the wonderful commitment of all those who dedicated themselves to its very precise organisation.  Actually apart from fulfilling its goal of transmitting an extended and diverse experience and knowledge in the field of tropical medicine, it gave us all the chance to meet and appreciate so many colleagues of such different horizons from all over the world.  In addition we were able to discover some of the realities of life in a developing country such as Perú.

B.J. Fesselet, M.D.
Lausanne, Switzerland

Let me say, once again, how impressed I have been with the whole enterprise.  I've been raving to all my coworkers about how great an experience it was.

Russell D. Bradford, MD
Fellow, Pediatric Infectious Disease
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Jennifer and I have returned from 2.5 years in Ghana.  We had a good experience and appreciated the Gorgas Course, especially with all the malaria, schisto, typhoid, TB, meningitis, AIDS, etc.

Brent Burket & Jennifer Thoene
Tarzana, California

I just received the Gorgas Alumni newsletter in the mail, and had immediate nostalgia for Perú and the Gorgas course!  It was really an excellent period of my life, I must say.  It was also a great place to meet people in the field, as evidenced by the fact that I'm flying down to Washington tomorrow to meet with Alan Magill and the Malaria Vaccine Development Unit people to arrange a research project for a few years once I finish my fellowship next year.

David Diemert, M.D.
McGill University
Montreal, Canada

Dear Dr. Banerji,
Thank you for your wonderful letter regarding your 9-week course in Tropical Medicine that took place in Perú from February to April.  It must have been a very interesting captivating course.  From the facial expressions of the people pictured in the classroom, it must have been anything but boring.  I would like to show your pictures around the College before returning them to you.

E-mail from Awards & Grants Officer at the
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada
(Dr. Banerji was partly funded by this body)

Now I'm using the knowledge obtained during the Gorgas Course especially in the control of malarial diseases.

Dra. Rocio Arjona
Ministry of Health, Panama

The course directly enhanced my professional effectiveness which has the potential for deployments to a variety of geographic areas.

Neil Gibson, M.D.
Canadian Armed Forces

Let me say thank you for everything that you have done for me.  Everything was excellent and very important for me because I'm going to Kenya on May 24 and I'll work there as a doctor at the first contact with patients.

Adriana Ondrusova, M.D.
Trnva University, Slovakia

I am back in the army and at war for the third time in my life.  My tropical medicine training in the Gorgas Course could not have been more timely.  No military commander could ask for a better qualified medical officer than one who passed through your course.

Dalton Diamond COL, MC, FS
USA Special Operations Command

The knowledge acquired at the course will be a great benefit for me personally, but at the same time a start must be made with the creation and development of a new medical branch in my country which we did not have until now - tropical diseases.

Mile Bosilkovski
Skopje, Macedonia

I am currently on materity leave and will be returning to my job as a primary care internist to a mostly immigrant population in November.  So far I have used my Tropical Medicine experience a little with patients who have had neurocysticercosis (a Mexican patient), hydatid cyst (a patient from Afghanistan), and lots of eosinophilia in patients new to this country.  Dan is working as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in Psychiatry and is director of Refugee Mental Health Services.  I think he actually is using his Tropical Medicine experience as well.  The wife of one of his Iraqui patients coughed up a worm and brought it in to him to see - he diagnosed Ascaris.

Jill Levy & Daniel Savin
Denver, Colorado

This extremely well organized course was the best thing that happened to me in the last 10 years and I shall cherish it as long as I live.

Gottfried Schmer, M.D.
Professor of Laboratory Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine
Seattle, Washington

I would just like to say that you and your staff are excellent teachers and that I learned and experienced a lot during the course.  My purpose in studying tropical medicine is to try to prepare myself for some sort of missionary work in the future.  Many thanks for a meaningful experience.

Vincent Vaccaro
New Hartford, New York

The Gorgas Course was a comprehensive well orchestrated event that was still affordable in time and cost.  I appreciated that in addition to clinical medicine it taught the public health and investigational skills necessary for optimal practice in the tropics.  The field trips were an added educational and cultural bonus.

I. Dale Carroll, M.D.
St. Joseph, Michigan

Between the patients I met, the places I visited, the things I learned, the inspiring and the incredible friends I made my memories of Gorgas will last a lifetime.  It truly was a very special experience, much more than just a simple course.  I’ve already had a chance to use some of what I’ve learned at my home institution, and look forward to putting it to even better use overseas.

Tobey Ann Audcent, BScN, MD
University of Ottawa, Canada

I have had the occasion to use much of the knowledge acquired during the course as we have constant malaria cases, TB, HIV/AIDS, filariasis.

Cheri Nijssen-Jordan
Lifeline Malawi, Malawi

We have become the local specialists for treatment of malaria, rickets, schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, etc.

Lorraine Croft, 2004
Margaret Chisholm Resettlement Centre
Calgary, Canada

My participation in the Gorgas course will always stand out as something very special, not only for being able to study in Peru at an institute of world fame, but to learn from the most inspiring teachers.

The Gorgas Course is still the most valuable educational experience that I’ve had….I’m teaching parasitology…needless to say the students are fascinated by the cases I saw during the Gorgas Course.

I learned so much…Largely due to the experience I gained in recognizing and treating exotic infections, I now work in a returned traveler and immigrant clinic in Australia.

The Gorgas Course for me provided a vital first step into the rewarding field of tropical medicine and traveler’s health.  I have established a travel medicine clinic and the first GeoSentinal site in China, as well as teaching tropical medicine and travelers’ health both locally and internationally.

This course has proved very useful to me during my missions with MSF as well as for my work on the pediatric wards with the so varied communities we see in Montreal. I often recommend the course to those who want to work in the “developing” countries.

Claudette Bardin
Montreal Children’s Hospital

I have subsequently become an ID specialist with a major interest in HIV-medicine.  I worked for  years after the course in Bangkok, where I coordinated various clinical trials in Thai HIV-infected people.

I now live and work as a teaching hospital ID specialist in the tropics.   Gorgas was an important time of learning for me, as during my ID fellowship in Canada I got very little teaching in parasitology and tropical medicine.  I am involved in starting a new tropical medicine program here….I hope we can someday approach the quality of education you provide.

Dr. Peter Daley
Christian Medical College Vellore, India

After Gorgas, I worked for Medecins sans Frontieres, and then the International Committee of the Red Cross.  But I’m now back in Singapore completing my training as a general surgeon.  The Gorgas course reputation here?  More and more ID physicians here are taking it.

Ting Hway Wong
Singapore General Hospital

Gorgas has prepared me well for the many complex medical problems I have encountered here in the tropics.
Since completing it, I have spent the last year with my family doing clinical work in underserviced areas of Kenya and Namibia.

I am sending to you some of the pictures of the last day in Iquitos.  I also would like to tell you that I learned and experienced a lot during the Gorgas course.  Thank you for the opportunity.  I hope we can keep in touch.

Gabriela Certad
Faculty of Medicine, Service of Parasitology
Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas

Well, I am home in New York and finally settling back into the routine of life-after-Gorgas.   It was an incredible experience for me.  I feel a whole new confidence and inspiration to pursue my career in Global Health, and also a new confidence in my role as teacher and mentor to students and residents here at Mount Sinai (and I am recommending all of them to take the Gorgas Course!).

Natasha Anu Anandaraja, MD
Mount Sinai Global Health Center
Class of 2007

Application Form can be found here.

Further information can be obtained through the following:

• Phone: (in the US) 800-UAB-MIST
• Phone: (from overseas) 205-934-1630
• Fax: 205-934-5600
• E-mail: info@gorgas.org