About Us
The Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, formerly known as the ‘Department of Tropical Medicine’, was among the five departments initially established with the Faculty of Tropical Medicine in 1960. Later, the academic and research activities of the department have been expanded to be more multidisciplinary started from basic laboratory research to applied research in community and product development that already commercialized by the licensing company, which can be summarize our activities as
“From laboratory to community and commercialization”.
The Department offers various postgraduate courses leading to M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Tropical Medicine, focused on three tracks, namely “BEST” which stand for Biotechnology, Environmental Health, Social Medicine & Toxicology.
Not only advance laboratory research such as development of Biologics; Therapeutic antibodies and vaccine against Dengue, Sar Cov-2 (COVID19) and Rabies viruses, and biological studies of blood fluke and liver fluke, but the research activities also expanded to cover environmental health problem such as, Air & Water pollution monitoring and treatment as well as social and behavioral factors influencing tropical diseases and public health problems of the country including Malaria, tuberculosis. Around 24 high quality scientific publications / year are produced from our department and 6 patents were already granted. Antimicrobial spray and probiotic products from our research have been commercialized by domestic companies.
Moreover, the world first biologics drug for treatment of Dengue virus infection has been licensed by foreign Big Bio-Pharma company, in that the Phase I clinical trial will be performed in the year 2021. The South East Asian Center for Medically Malacology (SEACMM) home of ‘Mollusk Museum’ that is considered one of the perfect mollusk museums in the region, is situated in our department. Department also offers laboratory service of circum-oval precipitation test (COPT) for blood fluke infection. The Department periodically offers training courses on Malacology and Environmental Health Impact Assessment.
