The creation of the first subject focused on rare diseases in the national field, motivated from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry of Universitat de València, achieved the 2015 Autonomous ERDF award to the best initiative in order to raise the quality of life of people with these minority diseases. The Spanish Federation for Rare Diseases (ERDF) award was given last Thursday by Her Majesty The Queen Letizia to Isabel Vázquez, the Vice-Principal of the Undergraduate Studies and Linguistics Policy of Universitat de València.
The event, which was celebrated due to the Rare Disease Day, took place at the Senate of Spain and had the presence of the ERDF President, Juan Carrión; the Health Care, Social Services and Equality Minister, Alfonso Alonso; and the Senate President, Pío García-Escudero. Furthermore, Isabel Vázquez was accompanied by the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Federico Pallardó.
The optional subject of rare diseases, of 4.5 credits -which was a result of the convention signed by the Universitat de València and ERDF-, will start being taught at the Medicine and Dentistry degree at Universitat de València next year 2015-2016, with the coordination of professor Pilar Codoñer and the collaboration of the Paediatrics, Medicine, Surgery, Pathology, Physiology and Preventive Medicine departments.
The Undergraduate Studies and Linguistics Policy Vice-Principal explains that the initiative of creating this subject of rare diseases “comes from the convention that Universitat de València signed it with ERDF, which includes several types of collaboration, both in training as in research and spread of these low level diseases”. Isabel Vázquez considers that it is “a responsibility of public universities to move forwards in the commitment with society in order to improve the quality of life of the citizens and, specially, of the more vulnerable people”.
Supply the lack of formation
Likewise, Federico Pallardó claims that this is the first national initiative to incorporate “a specific subject in rare diseases in the Medicine degree, which we hope it is continued in other universities”. The Physiology full university professor reminds us that in Spain there are three million people who suffer minority diseases and, however, “there is an important lack in the training of the sanitary professionals due to the difficulty of elaborating diagnostics, of limited casuistry available and of the lack of clinical experience as a consequence of the low prevalence of these diseases”.
Last update: 5 de march de 2015 14:00.
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