Interdisciplinary network engagement in a non-formal education process to study foodborne Chagas disease puzzle in Brazilian Amazon

Resumo

Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to overcome complex problems in contemporaneity. Chagas disease challenges in Brazilian Amazon, implicates One Health interdisciplinary approaches and teams to integrate health of humans, animals and the environment, to foster earlier detection of this zoonotic disease and better prevention. We studied the interdisciplinary team, the logistic of its long term field work and the education processes emerging on a non-formal education environment of a Chagas disease Protocol conduced in Pará. An alarming situation: notified acute cases almost doubled in two years. Photographs were presented (iconographic approach) to qualitatively describe the experience of the interdisciplinary team. Five recommendations were proposed at the end of the study. Our observational study with the interdisciplinary team confirmed the conception that “in connecting the purity of science with the pragmatism of policy, the intangibles of trust, rapport, and even friendship can be more potent than logic and more compelling than evidence”.