Signatories Professor Brendan Crabb AC and Professor Albert Mellam with Burnet's Dr Michelle Scoullar and Professor Nakapi Tefuarani.

Burnet Institute and the School of Medicine and Health Science (SMHS) at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) are set to benefit from a new and exciting collaborative partnership.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed today in Port Moresby will create opportunities for academic collaboration, student and staff exchanges, joint research, project tenders and grant applications.

Burnet Director and CEO Professor Brendan Crabb AC, and UPNG Vice Chancellor Professor Albert Mellam were signatories to the five-year agreement, witnessed by SMHS Executive Dean, Professor Nakapi Tefuarani.

Professor Crabb said the MOU would take Burnet’s longstanding productive and mutually rewarding relationship with UPNG to the next level.

“This agreement will work to further develop our relationship in a manner which benefits both institutions,” Professor Crabb said.

“The broad and generous scope of this MOU will allow for exchanges, collaboration and other shared activities that will consolidate and enhance the many personal and institutional linkages that already exist.”

The MOU nominates public health, infectious diseases, women’s and children’s health and health systems as areas providing opportunities for academic collaboration.

“It will be exciting to explore these opportunities to establish a range of collaborative research activities to support the next generation of global leaders in health,” Professor Crabb said.

Burnet has a proud track record of research and development in PNG, partnering with government and non-government health agencies and regional research networks on major health issues including HIV, alcohol and other drugs use, sexual health, malaria, and maternal and child health.

Find out more about Burnet’s work in PNG, including the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies project, and RID-TB project to reduce the impact of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis in Western Province.