MCAA Management
Antonino Puglisi
Harun Siljak
Fighting coronavirus together for the Balkans
Dear colleagues,
Given the new situation with the COVID19 pandemic, I feel obliged, as a medical doctor and epidemiologist working at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam (originally from Serbia), to offer my help in the ways I can. I would like to aid my country and the region with offering volonteering work on data analysis and visualisation of epidemiological markers from Balkan. There are already such efforts going on in the europe like this one: www.crowdfightcovid19.org or www.covid19cz.cz
I wanted to check with you are you aware of any kind of similar effort in the Balkans or would you like to join me and do something together? I have in plan to contact institutions in Serbia and try to access the available data and offer my help. I think we could benefit from geographical identification of the spread, pinpointing different behavioral patterns and try to estimate prediction models.
Do you have another idea? Can you do the same in your country? Please let me know!
Best,
Ivana Prokic, MD, PhD
16 Comments
Dear Ivana,
That is indeed a great idea. I've been thinking about something similar too. I came across this platform: https://www.ushahidi.com/covid that has been used by many institutions and for different causes. I don't know how it works though as you have to create an account and set a deployment. A friend of mine is setting it up in Finland. I can ask her if we decide to move on with this. The good thing is that we can use it for free for 3 months.
However, I'm open to help as much as I can with whatever idea and/or tool we decide to use.
Stay safe,
Ornela
Dear Ivana
So glad to hear from you. I hope you are fine. I agree with you and i want to be part of your this collaboration. In Albania we do not have many cases (123 until now). I am in Italy, but i will try to contact the responsables of Public Health Institute in Albania, hoping to receive a feedback. We can all have a skype call, to further discuss this.
Warm regards,
Ilda
Hi Ilda! I don't see your picture! Is this Ilda that I know, visiting our lab at Erasmus MC few years back? If yes, just today I found again a nice card you left for me when you were leaving! What a coincidence!
I hope you are well!
Best,
Ivana
Hello Ivana! Yes it's me! I am so happy you still have that card <3. I am fine,hvala. I hope you and your family are well.
Warm regards,
Ilda
Hello to everyone and I hope you and your families are safe!
Great to hear there are Balkan-wide initiatives from the experts to deal with the current circumstance. As I am not in the field, I dont think I can contribute much myself. However, my significant other and his colleagues (Serbia, Italy) are experts in data science, let me know if this can be of help to your efforts.
Best wishes,
Ana Cernok
Dear Ana,
Sounds good! Thank you all! Me and a few colleagues from the region tried contacting several institutions by email and are still waiting for answers. Will let you know as soon as I get any answer on whether we can be of help or get a hold on the data.
Best,
Ivana
Hello to all!
Ivana thanks for this initiative that I am fully supporting.
Sorry for not replying earlier, but this situation with COVID-19 is slowing me down as we now have increased job volume at the University Clinical Centre of Republic of Srpska where I work. Most difficult cases are treated in our institution and we are in state of emergency.
I would like to inform you and other colleagues that the Government of Republic of Srpska launched specialised website on COVID-19 in Republic of Srpska (unfortunately in Serbian and cyrillic only) with several themes such as: statistics, useful information, FAQ, etc.
The website is available at https://koronavirususrpskoj.com/ and if some other colleagues would like more information in English I can provide it.
As for your proposal Ivana, I would be also more than happy to assist despite the fact that my background is not in MD. I think that we can come with some analysis on foreseeing the development phases and to see differences and similarities within the region.
Also, I can recommend reading of Chinese experiences in fighting COVID-19 converted into the guideline that I recieved.
The website where you can find this guideline is https://issuu.com/28jun/docs/handbook_of_covid-19_prevention_and_treatment_srps (again in Serbian, but I presume that this can be found also in other languages on net).
I am at disposal for any information from Banja Luka, but also can cover whole BiH if needed.
Stay safe all and stay home !
Dear Ivana, dear all,
I applaud the initiative. Even though I am not really close to the medical fields maybe I can at least try to inquire about researchers working on this issue here in Greece (primarily Thessaloniki, where I am currently based in my ITN) since I have some contacts who are closer to the expertise needed.
Best wishes
Dear Ivana,
I am not currently in Albania or anywhere in the Balkans and unfortunately I do not know many people working in the medical field there, but I think it's would be a great effort.
On another note for anyone in the area that would like to help there is this new initiative that is trying to get face masks to healthcare professionals in Albania and Kosovo https://www.facebook.com/groups/219876996037646/
Best,
Jontana
Hi all,
Some data is now available (for Serbia) here:
All the best,
Marko
Dear colleagues,
Many of you contacted me and offered help and I am very happy about this. Some of you reached out to other contacts resulting in this interview I gave this morning for the Montenegrian tv (in serbian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIpPPp4HGVk&fbclid=IwAR1n7zuWbQxfge4PA2kzKaLcH6VZaxDFPwK9ujRndpeabl-uIqqKOgZlD8M
Thank you for this. Regarding how do we proceed, I would like to make a small inventory of your skills and expertise in general and amount of time you can contribute for this. If you are willing to participate or help in any way please send me an email to ajimmned@gmail.com Subject: corona quaranteam!
I would also like to hear your opinion on concrete points of action we can take in each country!
Stay safe and best regards!
Ivana
Dear all, we have started with organization of this efforts. To not overwhelm everyone with personal messages, here I forward the inital registration email for all of you who already contacted me, and for possible new participators. For any questions please contact me or write to coronaquaranteam@gmail.com.
If you do not want to join, we would appreciate if you could forward it to someone who might:
Hello to all of you!
We hope this email finds you well and that you are successfully adjusting to these difficult times. This email is sent to you if you showed interest or if we thought it might interest you to join our team in effort to share evidence-based information and fight misinformation surrounding COVID19 pandemic in the Balkans using your expertise.
Who are we?
We are Ivana Prokic, MD, PhD from Serbia, Jelena Pavlovic, MD, DSc from Serbia and Desana Kocevska, MD, PhD from Macedonia. We are specialized in epidemiology and work at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. We are apolitical, self-organized volunteers, willing to help and driven by the fact that all people we care about are affected by this pandemic and its consequences. We are sure we are not alone.
What do we want to do?
We are aware of the importance of accurate information, data analysis, visualization, mapping and integration in fight against the COVID19 pandemic. We are also aware of the fact that the virus does not know country borders and that a regional effort is the best way to fight it. We want to share relevant scientific knowledge and translate it to our languages as a way to provide correct and unbiased information for people to understand. We want to collect, analyze and share the regional (and per country) data on morbidity and mortality and localization of COVID19, policy results and predictions. We want to gather all of you, experts in the respective fields, to make an online centralized platform where you can share your observations, focused on the Balkan region. We need data analysts, scientists, translators, coordinators, social media facilitators, graphic designers, web designers, pharmacists, engineers, IT specialists, GIS data experts, statisticians, epidemiologists, medical doctors... Any contribution, no matter how small is a step forward.
What are the requirements for joining?
1. You have a relevant skill set
2. You are originally from the Balkans
3. You can communicate in English
4. You are willing to dedicate your time (whatever amount you can)
5. You will do it for free
What we expect from you?
1. To commit only to the things you can deliver
2. To be scientifically oriented and accurate
3. To be free to contribute with your own ideas and start a team to execute it
4. To advise us on the things you think we can do better
5. To act fast since the time is of essence in this matter
How do we want to organize?
We will have teams working on specific action points and per country teams working on translations, team and country coordinators and web designers and facilitators. We want to make a website to communicate knowledge, results and interpretations in a user-friendly way and in four languages (Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian/
If you are not interested, please disregard this email and consider sharing it with someone who might be interested!
If you want to join, please fill in this form https://forms.gle/
As we want to start asap we would like to have a zoom meeting with all of you to introduce and brainstorm on the possibilities. For your availability in the coming week please fill in this doodle https://doodle.com/
If you know someone who would be interested to join please forward this email, share it and talk about it! If there are many of us, we all need to do less work! Together we are stronger!
Thank you all and we hope you join us!
Ivana, Jelena and Desi
coronaquaranteam@gmail.com
Dear friends,
I just received also this: https://www.mariecuriealumni.eu/contribution-covid-19-emergency
Take care,
Suzana
Hello everyone, cheers from Podgorica :)
To inform you that I have told the European Commission - DGRTD unit in charge of WB about your initiative. We will have a WB R&I online meeting next week with all the ministries involved + RCC + EC, and one of the topics is fighting Corona. That is why I mentioned your initiative and they responded now that they will contact you, most probably DG EAC (in charge of MSCA).
Also, next week there will be a hackaton "Coronathon" in Montenegro, organised by UNDP and I am sharing some of the resources from here to them.
All the best!
Branka
Ministry of Science of Montenegro
MSCAA member
Dear Ivana, Jelena and Desi, dear Branka,
First of all, I am delighted to see that this members driven initiative is really beginning to take off. The Western Balkan Chapter is ready to help in any way it can, and we look forward to seeing the continued development of your engagement. This is exactly the sort of thing that the MCAA and the WB Chapter are for: connecting ideas and expertise among our members and harnessing our potential to create opportunities in and for the Western Balkans, especially in the light of the global challenge of COVID-19.
Please keep me in the loop as to developments. If there are specific ways we can assist you, just let me know.
Good luck and I hope the project is a great success.
Radenka
Chair of the MCAA Western Balkans Chapter
Dear Ivana,
Thanks for the idea and your willingness to help.
We can definitely reach out to our connections in the region and find a way to make use of your expertise. We can also use our Twitter account and personal social media accounts to share the idea.
We will be in touch.
Stay safe.
Radenka