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NIH grant benefits developing countries by Dick Peterson Public Relations When Dan McGee, Ph.D., came to MUSC’s Department of Biometry and Epidemiology last summer, he brought with him a training grant from the Fogarty International Center at NIH. The grant is part of a Fogarty program to enhance the informatics capabilities of developing countries. Guest students in the Department of Biometry and Epidemiology are from left: Richard Patterson, Samuel McDaniel and Christine Walters, from Jamaica, their faculty sponsor Dr. Dan McGee, and Hedy Broome of Barbados. In its second of four years, the grant joins efforts with institutions in Jamaica and Nigeria to build informatics infrastructure and provide training to students and staff from institutions in those countries. Collaborating with MUSC are Dr. Terrence Forrester, head of the Tropical Medicine Research Institute at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Mona, Jamaica and Dr. A. A. Adeyemo, who heads the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. During the first two years of funding the grant has allowed investigators at the Tropical Medicine Research Institute to establish a Unix-based work station for web-based and other applications there.  In Nigeria,  two Windows NT-based servers were obtained and a spread-spectrum connection to the internet established. Prior to the purchase of the spread-spectrum internet, connections at the University of Ibadan were through highly unreliable telephone connections. The training portion of the grants involve staff and students from Tropical Medicine Research Institute and the University of Ibadan taking course work in Department of Biometry and Epidemiology and other departments at MUSC and at the College of Charleston. MUSC’s first guests on the grant are Jamaicans Christine Walters, Samuel McDaniel and Richard Patterson, and Hedy Broome of Barbados.  McDaniel is an instructor in the department of mathematics at University of the West Indies and Broome is a research associate at the chronic disease research center in Barbados. Walters and Patterson are the first students in the newly created Masters in Medical Statistics program set up within the Department of Mathematics at University of the West Indies.  This new degree was established specifically for the MUSC program. Students in the program take courses both at University of the West Indies and at MUSC. Each student takes course work at MUSC and prepares the first draft of a master's thesis prior to returning to  University of the West Indies. After defending their thesis, the students receive a master’s degree from University of the West Indies. McGee, who is a professor in the Department of Biometry and Epidemiology, hopes to find funding to expand the exchange program to include an eight- to 12-week study program for American graduate students in Jamaica and Nigeria.