gms | German Medical Science

About this meeting

The Digital Symposium was held for the second time in October 2023. Together with a one-week interdisciplinary workshop on the topic of Human-Wildlife-Interactions (held jointly with the DAAD Climate Center ‘African Climate and Environment Center – Future African Savannas’, short: AFAS)  it became a platform for early-career researchers from Master’s to PostDoc level to elaborate on ongoing and planned research projects as well as present research findings across disease areas, geographies, and types of research to a broad Global Health audience.

Against this background, the events led by the German-West African Center for Global Health and Pandemic Prevention (G-WAC) pursue an integral approach to addressing health and well-being globally, incorporating the interdependencies of health and environmental and sociodemographic change, an increased human-wildlife interaction resulting in enhanced zoonotic spillovers, as well as the loss of biodiversity due to climate change. This happens all in the perspective of the epidemiological challenges individuals, populations, health professionals and health care systems consequently face. One aim of the 2nd Joint Digital Symposium is to create outputs on mutual global challenges from various contexts, countries and continents (Africa and South America) that can be taken up and used by others.

G-WAC is one of four health centres funded by the Federal Foreign Office through DAAD. The centers’ aim is to facilitate synergies through interdisciplinary scientific collaboration among researchers around the globe to address the major global challenges of our time by establishing solutions embedded in the respective local contexts.