English (United Kingdom)

Project Portfolio (YFC)

PJ1: Restructuring IOC Yellow Fever Collection.

    • General Objective: Recovering, organising and modernising the Yellow Fever Collection (YFC).

  • Specific Objectives/Targets/Activities:

    • Renovate the facilities that shelter the collection by promoting construction works and by acquiring furniture and equipment.

      • The works include construction of the consultation area, installation of high traffic flooring, changing of windows to enhance the security of the Collection, assembly of partition walls between the visiting room and the storage room of the materials (technical area), construction of the curator aquarium, and installation of exhausting system, smoke detectors and anti-theft system. Acquisition of sliding cabinets for organising the Collection, and optimising space and consultation activities.

    • Recover the Yellow Fever Collection materials by applying technical treatment to blocks and stained histological slides.

      • Complete the inventory and recover all materials by cleaning the blocks and histological slides, and by changing the binder in preserved samples. Implement a bar coding system for modernisation of filing activities.

    • Organise the Yellow Fever Collection in accordance with international standards that cover this rare type of material.

      • Acquire slide boxes and labels for adequate storage. New adequation in accordance with international standards. Create and feed the informatised inventory after databank software licensing and PDA reader acquisition.

PJ2: Implementation of the "Continuous Availability of Yellow Fever Collection Information Programme".

    • General Objective: Implement a permanent availability programme for information contained in the Collection.

  • Specific Objectives/Targets/Activities:

    • Create and launch an Internet website for access to the information contained in the Collection, as well as for information on how to visit/get to know the Collection.

    • Create and produce an educational video about the assembly of scientific collections, the history of the Yellow Fever Collection, how the Collection works and is maintained, and how to get to know the Collection.

PJ3: Implementation of the "Continuous Digitalization of YFC Materials Programme".

    • General Objective:Implement a permanent digitalisation programme for the materials of the collection.

  • Specific Objectives/Targets/Activities:

    • Implement a Continuous Digitalization of YFC Programme for obtaining images of stained histological slides and documents. Record each case with corresponding bar codes and, in the future, create a georeferenced thematic map.

PJ4: Yellow Fever Collection: Organising an informal teaching and learning tool.

    • General Objective: Present the Yellow Fever Collection in an interactive manner, allowing information assimilation for scientific knowledge and teaching purposes by means of students' visits to an informal learning space.

  • Specific Objectives/Targets/Activities:

    • Introduce science as a vocation to young people, regardless of their social class, encouraging interest in science, and scientific and technological careers, and contributing to the formation of a national judgmental mass;

      • Formulate teaching activities and work team qualification.

        • Experimentation and active communication among visitors will be encouraged with technical or experience objectives. Therefore, teaching activities to be carried out will be based on interaction, and the space provided will be consolidated as a communicating and learning environment. Thus, the activities will allow participation of students, and process knowledge gain by means of interaction with scientific issues in a historical and cultural context (nationally and internationally). For that, history facts and science will be used to show the dominant vision of a knowledge linear evolution, creating doubts and expectations, revealing science as a dynamic process, with continuities and discontinuities, stability and ruptures, in which there are no absolute certainties. This will allow the audience to see, think and build their vision of the knowledge history formation process, establishing relations with the society and indicating their social and cultural limitations.

          A multidisciplinary team will plan these efforts, and monitors will also be available, who will be in charge of following and accompanying the visits directly.

      • Pilot visits, including visits to the planned methodology test and visit routine implementation.

        • After preparation of teaching activities, pilot visits will be carried out with High School students from different schools and from Escola Politécnica de Saúde Joaquim Venâncio (Fiocruz) (Joaquim Venâncio Health Polytechnic School). These visits will serve to assess the activities proposed, student's behaviour within the dynamic process, understanding of focused processes (historical and scientific processes), and the dynamic process as a whole. Students will be invited to answer a diagnosis questionnaire (before the visit) and a sum questionnaire (after the visit) for the purposes of checking information assimilated/transformed into knowledge during the visit.

          This stage will serve as a test for the team to see which topics arouse the interest in the exhibition, so that monitor training is conducted, and eventual flaws and difficulties are identified, allowing problems to be corrected before the exhibition is open to the public.

PJ5: Yellow Fever Collection – Open Doors.

    • General Objective: Promote access to the public through guided visits (lay public) and research visits (consultation to histological slides and documents collection).

  • Targets/Activities:

    • Provide free guided visits to the lay public, which must be scheduled in the curatorship department, according to the demand of schools and universities. Research visits for consultation to stained histological slides and documents.

PJ6: Yellow Fever Collection: Promotion and Scientific Interaction (YFC Promotion).

    • General Objective: Advertise and promote scientific interaction and knowledge both nationally and internationally in connection with the Yellow Fever Collection.

  • Targets/Activities:

    • Promote debates about collections and their preservation for national and international collection interchange. Organise international forums for the exchange of experiences related to scientific collection preservation, and discuss issues related to personal files associated with this kind of collection;

    • Promote the participation of the work team in national and international exhibitions as a way to advertise science to the society, and the role of centres and science museums in such context;

    • Promote scientific interchange with the Colombian Yellow Fever Collection.

      • During the 10-year period of this management plan, we will seek an interchange with "Instituto Nacional de Salud" (National Health Institute) in Colombia, as Colombia participated in the viscerotomy programme of Rockfeller Foundation with its own laboratory as of 1934, when Brazil started receiving only suspected cases for diagnosis clarification. As with the YFC, the study of liver samples allowed Dr. Gast to describe the first Colombian case of visceral leishmaniasis (1944), disseminated histoplasmosis (1947) and the door to the first cases of fulminant hepatitis. The interchange will be profitable both scientifically and histologically. Databank with complementary information will be created, in addition to a georeference map of the cases for the purposes of studying, for example, the proximity of Lábrea and the first cases of B-D hepatitis in Colombia.

PJ7: Implementation of the "Continuous Preservation of YFC Materials Programme".

    • General Objective: Implement a preservation programme for all biological materials, and replacement of blocks and slides.

  • Targets/Activities:>

    • Implement a continuous preservation and replacement programme for blocks and stained slides.

PJ8: Retrospective Molecular Study of the Yellow Fever Collection with Emphasis in Flavivirosis.

    • General Objective: Conduct a retrospective study on the viscerotomies that compose IOC Yellow Fever Collection, Fiocruz, for the purposes of confirming the etiological diagnosis of positive cases and/or determining the presence of flavivirus as agent in doubtful or negative cases.

  • Specific Objectives/Targets/Activities:

    • Implement amplifiable RNA extraction and purification methodology from material in formaldehyde solution and paraffin for use in RT-PCR. Research, by RT-PCR, the presence of the following flavivirus in paraffin sections: Yellow Fever, Dengue, and Hepatitis C virus. These last two will be systematically searched for in pieces shown to be negative for Yellow Fever.

    • With this project, the team expects to implement an amplifiable RNA extraction and purification methodology by RT-PCR, which also allows retrieval of information "filed" in the pieces of the Yellow Fever Collection. The project has an inter-institutional character, integrating the Virus Surface Structure Laboratory of the Virology Department of Instituto de Microbiologia Prof. Paulo de Góes - UFRJ (Professor Paulo de Góes Microbiology Institute – Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro) and the Pathology Laboratory of Instituto Oswaldo Cruz – Fiocruz. The project will also have a multidisciplinary focus, including classical and molecular aspects of Virology and Pathology, addressing, as consequence, the medical and scientific richness of a Collection that represents the history of Yellow Fever in Brazil.

Financial Support All rights reserved - Laboratory of Pathology
IOC Instituto Oswaldo Cruz | IOC | FIOCRUZ - Av. Brasil, 4365 - Tel:(21) 2562-1452
Manguinhos - Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil CEP: 21040-360
FAPERJ| CNPq

IOC

FIOCRUZ Governo Federal