World Health Day: Supporting the work of our healthcare heroes

On 7 April, we celebrate World Health Day, a chance to show our gratitude for the invaluable work of our medical professionals. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers across Europe and the world are working tirelessly to fight against the virus, and caring for those affected. At the Research Executive Agency, work continues on managing projects to give healthcare workers the support they need.

Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and alleviating the heavy burden on our medical professionals is currently everyone’s highest priority. Since its beginning, the REA has been managing research projects that give our medical professionals the means to test for, and fight new viruses as quickly as possible.

Better understanding viruses can be a major advantage when developing treatments. For example, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie IF project COV-RESTRIC helped researchers to enhance their understanding of what prevents human Coronaviruses from spreading to certain species. They discovered a protein in immune animal hosts that protect their immune cells from infection. The protein could lead to new ways to protect our immune cells from infection, and be part of future strategies to fight Coronaviruses and their spread.

Another project, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie IF project BatSECoV seeks to better understand the differences between the immune responses of humans and bats. First research appears to indicate that the majority of Coronaviruses (the family of viruses that COVID-19 is part of) originally emerged from bats. However, unlike humans, bats appear to have a certain tolerance to Coronavirus infections. Understanding these differences could also help researchers develop new antiviral strategies.

The REA also manages projects to train specialised researchers to quickly identify new viruses, and develop treatments, as well as tests that are accessible to healthcare professionals.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project HONOURs seeks to train researchers as “preparedness experts”, who can detect and identify viruses in the early stages of an outbreak, even when those viruses have not yet been discovered. These experts could then help locate, identify, characterise, contain, and control infections, as well as evaluate the risk of them spreading.

Once a virus has been identified, testing can be vital to understand the scale of the outbreak, and for prevention. This is why the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project ND4ID is working to train 15 PhD students on the clinical, biotechnological and technical aspects of diagnostic development. The project seeks to give them the means and knowledge to develop new testing techniques that can be used at the place of care, meaning faster diagnosis by medical professionals is possible.

With the virus identified, and testing possible, work can begin on a treatment. Developing antiviral drugs is a complex process, and Europe needs well-trained experts with multidisciplinary skills to advance antiviral drug development. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project ANTIVIRALS created a network of outstanding universities and research institutions, as well as partners in the private sector. The network provided training for the next generation of researchers and prepared them for a future role in antiviral drug development in Europe.

Through these projects, and many others, European researchers can give healthcare professionals the tools they need to prevent and control this as well as future outbreaks and pandemics.  

Finally, although the focus currently rests on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to recognise the outstanding work of healthcare professionals also in normal circumstances. Indeed, for this year’s World Health Day, the World Health Organisation has chosen to celebrate the work of nurses and midwives, both of whom play a critical role in all of our health. The REA manages many projects that seek to facilitate their work. These include projects such as the FP7 Marie Curie Action ETIME project, which introduced new tools and methods to treat patients based around model-based therapeutics, or the FET Open SMARTNURSE project, which developed new digital educational tools to train nurses. The REA is confident of the positive impact these and other projects can create for workers in healthcare and of course, our society as a whole, especially during crises, now and in the years to come.