The Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies (GMI) has been an institution dedicated for more than 80 years to research of diseases in the tropics and preventive medicine. Its expertise in studying diseases of the tropics originated from the necessity to consolidate and maintain one of the greatest triumphs in the history of medicine, the eradication of urban yellow fever and the control of malaria in the cities of Panama and Colon with the construction of the Panama Canal.
This triumph, led by Dr. William C. Gorgas in the first years of the 20th century, was achieved by one of the largest and most successful community-level public health interventions ever recorded in the history of medicine. Since then, many emerging and reemerging diseases have been studied at GMI and physicians and scientists of many nationalities working there have made significant contributions to medicine in the tropics. These collaborations and lines of investigation have continued up to the present.
GMI has excellent parasitology, immunology, genomics, entomology, water and food chemistry, bacteriology, entomology and virology laboratories. Besides having an epidemiology and biostatistics department, it conducts research on health administration, chronic diseases and human reproduction. GMI has contributed to better the health of Panama and the Central American countries by acting as a reference laboratory to diagnose diseases like yellow fever, malaria, measles, arbovirus febrile illness, viral encephalitidies, influenza, dengue and hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome. Jorge Motta, MD, MPH, has been the Director General since 2004.
Most recently GMI became a World Bank-Pan-American Health Organization reference laboratory for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for the Central American region. Its lengthy tradition of service in the region has permitted GMI to maintain and nurture close contacts and rapid communication with all the public health installations of Panama’s Ministry of Health, with the health installations of the Social Security System and with the main private hospitals of the country.
In 2006, GMI signed an MOU with the Department of Health and Human Services and was also awarded two grants, one to increase its virology diagnostic capacity and to strengthen the surveillance of influenza virus in Panama and Central America and the other to develop a Regional Training Center for community health care workers of the Central American Region.
The Regional Training Center is an educational facility dedicated to community health care workers and clinicians of Central America to prepare them to provide better primary and preventive health care to underserved rural and poor urban communities and indigenous populations. These health care providers are trained to provide the first line of response to health needs of their communities, especially in areas related of infectious diseases, pandemic illness response and the attainment of Millennium Development Health Goals.
GMI's has research agreements and research projects with academic centers like the Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, the University of South Florida, the University of New Mexico, and the Walter Reed Institute of Research. GMI has developed strong links with the epidemiology programs and the extended immunization programs of all the countries in Central America, with the World Health Organization (WHO), specifically with the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and influenza program, with the Center for Diseases Control of the United of America (CDC-USA) and (CDC-MERTU-G), with the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and with institutions like the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
Today GMI is an autonomous public institution that works closely with the Ministry of Health. Its vision is to improve the health of Panama and Central America. Its mission is to develop health research in Panama, to fulfill the functions of a national public health laboratory and to provide education to health care workers of the region. GMI is evolving to become Panama’s national public health institute and will continue serving the Ministry of Health by providing the best evidence available to develop public health policy.
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