This course uses a series of interactive lectures to address the latest health issues and treatments for travelers and endemic populations affected by tropical and parasitic diseases presenting with dermatological manifestations.

Faculty will present the state-of-the-art in clinical care, research, and diagnostics, as well as preventative medicine for these conditions through the following activities:

Clinical Rounds

Clinical rounds are done on a rotating basis in groups of no more than 5 participants with one senior sub-specialty certified faculty. These are held daily at the Cayetano Heredia Hospital wards and outpatient dermatology clinic for a total of 12.5 hours. During each rounding period, highly illustrative patients with dermatological manifestations of tropical diseases are seen and discussed by the participants with interactive review of clinical presentation, epidemiology, differential diagnosis, diagnosis and treatment.
Clinical exposure is not merely observational. Intensive interactive clinical teaching by the faculty is done in every group, often including visits to the microbiology or pathology lab for final confirmation of diagnoses. An advantage to our course is, unlike many other on-site tropical training courses, the patients seen by our participants have access to extensive testing so that diagnoses are confirmed through definitive diagnostics (microbiology or pathology) in most cases.

Didactic Lecture

Traditional lecture format given in 1-hour blocks.

Case Discussion Sessions

Every participant is asked to present 1-2 challenging cases in a rotating basis and lead the discussion. A faculty member will contribute at the end of each session.

Case Conferences

A case is presented by a faculty member who then leads an interactive discussion of differential diagnosis and diagnostic workup. Other case conferences will involve teaching cases in a specific subject area collected over time by faculty members.

Laboratory Sessions

Laboratory sessions in our pathology lab are established to review the most common histopathological findings for different tropical diseases. Sessions may involve practical aspects, including: methods used to obtain samples, discussions regarding determining which diagnostics are high yield for these tropical diseases, and appropriate novel molecular methods of diagnosis.

Typical Daily Schedule

Other resources

• Access to WIFI connection in the classroom.
• Access to an electronic library in tropical medicine.
• Access to hard copies of most important tropical medicine textbooks at the Tropical Medicine Institute Alexander von Humboldt.