Spring School Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Background
Infectious diseases remain a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. New pathogens continue to emerge causing unforeseen outbreaks leading to events like the influenza pandemic in 2009, the Zika epidemic in 2016, and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Epidemiology provides central tools for the assessment and response to these health threats on a population level.
Course Content
The course, offered as a week-long short course, is recognised as an elective for medicine students at the University of Münster, but is also open to external participants, leading to great variety in the academic/professional background of students. The course is taught by lecturers from the University of Münster as well as invited lecturers from outside the university (for example, lecturers from the Swiss TPH, BNI, Institut Pasteur, GIZ/RKI taught at the course in March 2023).
The mix of lectures and hands-on exercises in the course provides participants a good introduction to the world of infectious disease epidemiology, and broadly covers the following themes:
- Infectious diseases and their transmission
- Disease surveillance
- Outbreak investigations
- Infection prevention and control
- An introduction to the mathematical modelling of disease spread