Claúdia Fançony Videira and Chissengo Tchonhi are the most recent doctoral degree holders from CISA, Angola. The researchers defended their theses remotely, through Zoom conferencing, due to the ongoing pandemic restrictions.

Cláudia Fançony was a doctoral student at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Oporto with her thesis entitled “Effectiveness of Nutrition and WASH/malaria educational community-based interventions in reducing anemia, malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in preschool children from Bengo, Angola.”

Anemia in children aged under five is ranked by the World Health Organisation as a public health problem. According to Cláudia Fançony, there is very little data on the prevalence of anemia, the factors associated with its occurrence and the results of interventions seeking to bring about its reduction and hence the need to systematise and publicise this information both for researchers and political decision-makers. Specifically as regards Cláudia Fançony’s area of study, there are no results on educational interventions in nutrition or best practices for water, sanitation and hygiene for the reduction of nutritional anemia in Angola, which limits both the design of scientific research studies and the planning of anemia control and prevention policies specifically tailored to the Angolan context.

The thesis by Chissengo Tchonhi, of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Oporto, approached the subject of “Epidemiology of hemoglobinopathies: the genetic variability of hemoglobin and erythrocytosis enzymes in the province of Bengo”.

In Angola, as with other countries afflicted by high rates of malaria, hemoglobinopathies are a public health problem and the World Health Organisation recommends establishing the conditions for monitoring children through to the age of five.

Hemoglobinopathies involve genetic diseases that affect hemoglobin and with the resulting diseases causing high rates of mortality in children aged up to five.

Find out more about Chissengo Tchonhi’s project on the Gulbenkian Foundation’s website.