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Committee Kroch-Scholarship

email: kroch-stipendium@bnitm.de

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Call for applications for the Howard and Gabriele Kroch Scholarship

Funding for research at BNITM partner institutions

The Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) and the Howard and Gabriele Kroch Foundation in Hamburg are pleased to announce the start of the new call for applications for the Howard and Gabriele Kroch Scholarship. The aim of the scholarship is to support and promote young scientists in the field of tropical medicine in their work on site at a BNITM partner institution in the Global South.

[Translate to English:] Im Vordergrund ist eine Weltkarte mit Flügen von Deutschland Richtung Afrika, Südamerika und Asien. Im Hintergrund ist das BNITM-Gebäude abgebildet.
©BNITM

The Howard and Gabriele Kroch Scholarship has been awarded annually since 2023; the program runs for five years. The foundation provides up to 7,500 euros per scholarship. Funding is provided for small research projects by young scientists at the BNITM with a research duration of six to eight months and a stay in a BNITM partner country (country in which the BNITM cooperates with an institution). It is important that the project deals with a tropical disease and/or has a potentially significant medical benefit for vulnerable population groups in resource-poor regions.

“Infectious diseases caused by tropical pathogens are a serious health problem that is becoming even more threatening in times of globalisation, long-distance tourism and migration,” say Howard and Gabriele Kroch.

First supported project

The first scholarship in 2023 was awarded to Anja Tillema, a MD student in the Snakebite Envenoming research group at BNITM, for her dissertation entitled ‘Comparison of point-of-care ultrasound with chest X-ray for the diagnosis of pneumonia in adult patients in Ghana’. She carried out this project in Agogo, Ghana, in collaboration with the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research (KCCR) in Kumasi.

Scholar Tillema values her time in Ghana: “Thanks to the scholarship, I had the opportunity to spend six months in Agogo and collect data for my doctoral thesis at Agogo Presbyterian Hospital. The educational experiences I had there, especially those in a different healthcare system, are invaluable. For my doctoral thesis, I was allowed to examine the lungs of patients on site using ultrasound as part of the CLAARITY study, which not only gave me important ultrasound skills, but also taught me a lot about the disease patterns in the tropical region. The CLAARITY study aims to establish new inflammatory parameters for pneumonia and I am very grateful to have been able to play a small part in it.”

The photo shows a woman smiling into the camera and wearing a blue hospital gown.
Anja Tillema at the Agogo Presbytarian Hospital.   ©Anja Tillema
The image shows a patient in a hospital bed from the perspective of the bottom of the bed. From behind, a woman in blue hospital clothing is holding an ultrasound probe to the patient's chest. At the same time, she is looking at a tablet displaying an ultrasound image held by another woman standing beside her.
Bedside ultrasound scan at Agogo Presbyterian Hospital.   ©Anja Tillema

Further information about the scholarship and the application process can be found here.

In 2007, Howard M.S. Kroch, Honorary Consul of Trinidad and Tobago, founded the Howard and Gabriele Kroch Foundation together with his wife Gabriele. Its purpose is to support young scientists in the field of tropical medicine.

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