President of Nagasaki University
Hiroshi Saito
M.D., Ph.D.

President's Profile

 

President's address at the opening ceremony of
Diploma Course on Research Development of Products
to meet Public Health Needs

October 2, 2006

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
On behalf of Nagasaki University, I would give you a warm welcome to this very interesting and important new diploma course on product development.

In fact, my specialty is public health and hygiene, so I really appreciate such a course that can bring a spirit of product development to meet public health in the world to the young researchers like you.

There is a famous Japanese medical microbiologist, Hideyo Noguchi, born in Fukushima, Japan in 1876 and died due to Yellow Fever in Accra, Ghana in 1928.
He got a license of M.D. in 1897 when he was 20 years old. He moved to the United States in 1900 to do research on the tropical diseases. Finally he got a position at Rockefeller University and worked on the search for the pathogen of Yellow Fever.

At that time, there was no electron microscope; however, he found a kind of Spirochete as a pathogen of the Yellow Fever Syndrome in Equador, South America in 1918. Actually the disease was revealed to be WEIL DISEASE that shows jaundice and fever. He made a vaccine to prevent this infectious disease and showed a big impact on the public health in Latin American countries. Even now, in Equador, Noguchi is respected by the people.

Unfortunately, there was another type of Yellow Fever in the world. Many researchers claimed there must be another pathogen to provoke Yellow Fever. Noguchi was really honest and serious researcher so that he finally decided to visit Ghana, previously called Golden Coast in West Africa where many people suffered from yellow fever.

He got a lot of samples from different animals and humans without taking enough sleep and almost ready to go back to United States, but he got yellow fever and passed away there in 1928 when he was 51 years old.

He always said that he wanted to help the people who are suffering from such a serious infectious diseases. His spirit is really simple and strong and has been influencing younger generation to follow him in Japan even now. Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University is inherited such spirit from Dr. Noguchi. I hope this course will help such people who simply want to improve the world health conditions.

Finally, I would like to give my sincere thanks to all the contributors to this course from Thai, Chinese, Colombian, Japanese Universities, WHO and Pharmaceutical Society of Japan.
Thank you very much.





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