PROMOTINGGLOBALHEALTHSTARTING FROM NAGASAKI

Left: Professor KANEKO Satoshi (center) specializes inecological epidemiology and serves as deputy dean of
the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University,
as well as head of its branch in Kenya and director of its
Neglected Tropical Diseases Innovation Center.
Top right: Nagasaki University has a graduate schoolthat provides high-level international education in
partnership with the London School of Hygiene andTropical Medicine, with a focus on fostering humanresources who can contribute to global health.
Bottom right: Professor MORITA Koichi, a virology
specialist, serves as director of the DEJIMA Infectious
Disease Research Alliance at Nagasaki University.

country. A medical training
school established there in 1857
formed the foundations of today’s
Nagasaki University. Building on
more than 160 years of experiencein fighting unknown infectious
diseases, the university now leads
Japan’s research into such illnesses.
Professor KANEKO Satoshi,
an expert on epidemiology, isdeputy dean of the Institute ofTropical Medicine, Nagasaki
University, Japan’s only research
center for such medicine.
He said, “Often, developing
countries lack properly organizeddata on their inhabitants andmedical treatments. That makes
it hard to see which infectious
diseases are occurring where,
and on what scale.” The institute,in collaboration with NEC
Corporation and the Kenya
Medical Research Institute,has developed the world’s first
vaccination management system
for newborns, equipping it withbiometric authentication toreliably validate guardians’ voices
and newborns’ fingerprints. A
demonstration test has been
underway at a Kenyan hospital
since September 2022, with theaim of full-scale introduction into

Nagasaki, the site of the G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting, is home to a leading university in the field of infectious
disease research. What does this university, with its extensive work on global health—especially tropical diseaseresearch—aim to achieve in the post-COVID-19 world?
Nagasaki, situated on theisland of Kyushu in southwest
Japan, will host the G7 Health
Ministers’ Meeting in May.
Given COVID-19’s devastating
global impact and the reminder
it has provided of the horrorsthat a pandemic can bring, thedeliberations at the meeting
will work toward strengthening
global health architecture toensure better health and living
standards for all people.
As Japan’s only link to theWest from the 17th to mid-19th
centuries, Nagasaki was onceat the forefront of Japan’s fightagainst the influx of infectious
diseases from abroad and it wasalso where Western medicine
was first introduced to theA gatepost from Nagasaki Medical College,
the predecessor of Nagasaki University,
remains on campus as a reminder of the city’s
atomic bombing. Located within the site of an
atomic bombing, the university is also
committed to world peace.

A vaccination management system for newborns has beenequipped with biometric authentication. The photoshows medical staff capturing the fingerprints of anewborn baby in Kenya.

the country by the end of 2023.
Kaneko said, “If we can makethe technology’s use feasible andmore widespread, not only will
we be able to manage vaccinations,but we will also be able to obtain
big data in the future linked todiverse information such as that
related to diseases and the living
environment. That could form thebasis for various types of researchand, I hope, lead to solutionsin impoverished areas. We canalso use the system—originallydesigned for developing countries
with weak IT infrastructure—indeveloped countries as well, forinstance in times of natural disaster.”Nagasaki University will also
work to bolster its researchcapabilities to prepare for thenext pandemic. In April 2022,
the university established theDEJIMA Infectious Disease
Research Alliance to consolidate
thetalentandresearch
infrastructure scattered among
various institutions on campus.
In October of the same year,
the Alliance also established
the Vaccine Research andDevelopment Center, which
has been conducting integrated
R&D activities ranging frombasic vaccine research to thedevelopment of manufacturingprocesses. Additionally, theAlliance is gearing up to achieve
the goals of the 100 Days
Mission—unveiled at the 2021
G7 Summit—to develop vaccines
within 100 days after the next
pandemic is declared. As Professor
MORITA Koichi, the Alliance’sdirector, said, “What’s mostimportant is people.” Beyond theconventional university system,
the institute seeks to recruit
talented people from outside
the medical field and collaborate
with private companies and otheruniversities on R&D. “Today,environmental problems andother compounding factors arealso causing infectious diseases tospread. I hope that new ideas will
come about not just through theincorporation of classical researchmethods, but also through thesuggestions coming from various
other fields,” Morita said.
Due to its location, whichis particularly open to theworld, Nagasaki University
has long taken on the threatsthat infectious diseases pose tohumanity. The university willcontinue to lead infectious diseaseresearch, examine the challenges
behind such diseases, and work
toward better global health using
a comprehensive approach.