Mestrado Profissional em Ciências Aplicadas à Saúde

REGIONAL INTEGRATION

Pouso Alegre is located in the southern region of the State of Minas Gerais, in the valey of Sapucaí River, along Fernão Dias Highway (BR-381), a strategic area of access to three major centres of production and consumption in the country; it lies 200 kilometers from the city of São Paulo, 385 km from Belo Horizonte and 390 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro.

This privileged location allowed a great development, enabling the internalization of large industrial projects, supported by an industrial development policy from the State of Minas Gerais Government, focused on the creation and consolidation of industrial districts, the classic version of a highly number of sectors in the industrial clusters. Pouso Alegre is a significant industrial center, especially for the food industry (apart from large multinational companies’ factories, it gathers a large number of smaller companies focused on production and processing of Strawberry and potato, raw materials which the region is a big producer). UNIVÁS interacts with this sector keeping, since 2007, a technical and material cooperation agreement with the Agricultural Research Company of Minas Gerais (Empresa de Pesquisa Agropecuária de Minas Gerais , EPAMIG), which enabled the creation of the Technological Center of Potato and Strawberry in Pouso Alegre, with the participation of researchers from EPAMIG and UNIVÁS. Pouso Alegre is also one of the major poles of the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil, hosting factories of large pharmaceutical companies, as Cimed, Biolab and Chemical Union (União Química).

UNIVÁS has an important social commitment in the region, with emphasis on the area of health. Over more than four decades of existence, produced more than 10,000 professionals operating in the labour market. The institution operates in the area of health through Clinical Hospital Samuel Libânio (Hospital das Clínicas Samuel Libânio, HCSL), secondary and tertiary reference to 53 municipalities of southern Minas Gerais, serving a population of approximately one and a half million inhabitants.

The wounds, with its great diversity of ethiologies, have attention in the approach of the primary, secondary and tertiary health care. Thus, it constitutes a public health problem and require involvement and attention of public health policies in the country. The professional master's degree program, with the multi and interdisciplinary concentration area on wounds, allows the development of professionals with critical consciousness focused on innovation and technology, to act not only on the network of health care, but also in the management of the municipality and region health and improvement of technologies in private companies. The professional master's program is favored by the proximity to the National Telecommunications Institute (Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações, INATEL), located in Santa Rita do Sapucaí, approximately 20 km from Pouso Alegre, who has maintained with UNIVÁS, for four years, a technical and scientific cooperation agreement. INATEL offers undergraduate and graduate lato sensu courses in Biomedical Engineering. The association of technical experience from biomedical engineers with the tradition of providing services in health area from UNIVÁS, enables the formation of a Local Productive Arrangement in this area, encouraging the development of technologies for wounds prevention and treatment. The Professional Master’s Degree Program also allows greater interaction between university and company, through the partnership with Cimed's Research and Development Institute (Instituto Cimed de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento, ICPD). ICPD counts on an excellent infrastructure for pre-clinical and clinical research in the pharmacological area and the Professional Master's Degree Program develops qualified professionals to development of products aimed at wounds prevention and treatment, particularly in the herbal medicines field.

The development of "Phytotherapy in wounds" scientific-technological line of research allows the development of qualified professionals to act in the different stages of of these medicines’ supply chain, since the development of high-quality raw materials, with the production of certified seedlings, favoured by the partnership between UNIVÁS and the Agricultural Research Company from Minas Gerais, (Empresa de Pesquisa Agropecuária de Minas Gerais, EPAMIG) since 2009, development and production of medicines (through partnership with CIMED), until the clinical application of the products.

Considering the high prevalence and the social impact of wounds, the local production of medicines based on natural products, as long as being low-cost, can contribute to a larger access of the population to the medicines.

In addition, this line of reserach allows the inclusion of elementary and high school students in the activities of the University, through extension projects and scientific junior initiation. Faculty members from the professional master's degree program develop, with high school students from rural schools, projects for implementation of herbal medicine gardens in rural communities of the region.