The Novartis Foundation and its partners highlighted progress towards transforming the health of the poorest populations at the 9th European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health (ECTMIH) held in Basel from September 6 - 10. Updates on nine Novartis Foundation-sponsored healthcare delivery models and disease elimination programmes in low- and middle-income countries are being showcased in scientific sessions and sponsored-symposia.

"The ECTMIH is a great opportunity to join with our partners and the global health community to review the progress we are making in the innovation of healthcare delivery and disease elimination. It's an exciting time for us as we are seeing projects such as telemedicine in Ghana move towards scale and integration into the local health system as well as new projects, such as our leprosy contact tracing strategy, begin to gain momentum," said Dr. Ann Aerts, head of the Novartis Foundation.

Novartis Foundation-sponsored projects presented at ECTMIH scientific sessions include identifying and addressing structural gaps in primary health care in Tanzania, Ghana telemedicine - using mHealth to bridge the gaps in health service and availability and accessibility, Cambodia retrospective contact tracing project: innovation in contact tracing to improve early diagnosis of leprosy, leprosy alert response network and surveillance system (LEARNS), evaluation of a community based programme for hypertension control in Ghana, public-private partnerships to strengthen human resources for health through training and eLearning: a case study from Tanzania.

Added Ann Aerts, "Our objective at ECTMIH is to share our learnings, the successes and challenges, with the global health community and in turn, learn as much as we can from them for our own work. We need to be open and collaborative as we are all aiming towards the same goal to transform the health of the poorest populations."

The Novartis Foundation is a philanthropic organization pioneering innovative healthcare models that can have a transformational impact on the health of the poorest populations.