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Por qué les exijo a mis estudiantes de biología molecular un diario de campo estructurado (y qué enseña esto sobre comunicar ciencia en el Perú)
Iquitos, marzo de 2024. Laboratorio de campo del Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana (IIAP), a orillas del Nanay. Diez estudiantes de quinto año de biología molecular de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) están inclinados sobre microscopios ópticos revisando laminillas de sangre periférica. Tres semanas en Loreto, acompañando al equipo de […]
How Tropical Disease Research Gets Underfunded: The 10/90 Gap from a Peruvian Lab Bench
I teach molecular biology at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, in Lima, and every semester I open the course with the same exercise. I ask the room to name a drug that exists because someone funded tropical disease research. Artemisinin for malaria, someone says. Benznidazole for Chagas, says another. The antimonials for leishmaniasis. Then […]
Why Tropical Disease Research Keeps Losing the Funding Race—and What That Means for Peru
By Dr. Luz Mendoza Tropical disease research is the systematic study of infections that thrive in warm, humid regions and disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries. It includes work on malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, soil-transmitted helminths, and a long list of neglected tropical diseases. Adjacent concepts include global health financing, research and development pipelines, […]
Why Tropical Disease Research Keeps Losing the Funding Race — and What That Means for Peru
Lima, Peru. Tropical disease research is the study of infections that thrive in warm, humid, and often economically marginalized regions — dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, leptospirosis, soil-transmitted helminths. The field also touches on neglected tropical diseases, vector-borne transmission, zoonotic spillover, and global health equity. For Spanish-speaking students and professionals in Peru, this is not an […]
How Tropical Disease Research Gets Underfunded: A View from Peruvian Labs and Field Sites
By Dr. Luz Mendoza Tropical disease research is the systematic study of infections that hit warm, humid regions hardest—dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, leptospirosis, and plenty of others. Related terms you will see in the literature include neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), vector-borne transmission, field epidemiology, and health systems research. For Spanish-speaking students and professionals in Peru, […]
Why Tropical Disease Research Gets Underfunded: A View from Peru
By Dr. Luz Mendoza Tropical disease research is the systematic study of infections that hit warm, humid regions hardest—dengue, malaria, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, soil-transmitted helminths. Related terms you will hear a lot are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), global health financing, research capacity building, and health equity. For Spanish-speaking students and professionals in Peru, this is […]
Why Tropical Disease Research Keeps Losing the Funding Race—and What That Means for Peru
By Dr. Luz Mendoza Tropical disease research is the scientific study of infections that thrive in warm, humid climates and disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries. In Peru, that means dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, leptospirosis, and soil-transmitted helminths. Adjacent concepts include neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), vector-borne transmission, zoonotic spillover, and the social determinants of infection. […]
On the Problem With Nutrition Studies That Rely on Self-Reporting
Try to reconstruct the exact recipe of a ceviche you ate three weeks ago. How many grams of fish? How much lime juice? Was the onion red or white, and how long did it sit in the marinade? Most of us would get the broad strokes right, but the details would blur. Now imagine doing […]
When Memory Fails: The Hidden Flaw in Nutrition Studies and What It Means for Peruvian Diets
Try to remember everything you ate last week. Not just the obvious meals—the lomo saltado on Tuesday, the ceviche on Saturday—but the handful of canchita you grabbed while waiting for lunch, the spoonful of sugar you stirred into your morning emuliente, the exact size of that sweet potato. For most of us, the task is […]
When Food Diaries Lie: The Hidden Flaws of Self-Reported Nutrition Data in Peruvian Health Research
In nutrition science, the food frequency questionnaire and the 24-hour dietary recall are the old reliables. They ask people to remember what they ate—how many times last week did you have quinoa, a slice of papaya, or a glass of chicha morada? On paper, these tools seem like a straight path to understanding how diet […]