Mrs. Muriel Ramírez Santana

External PhD researcher

She is a medical doctor from Chile. She is Specialist in Public Health and holds two Masters Degrees: Public Health and Epidemiology (Universidad de Chile) and International Health and Tropical Medicine (Instituto Carlos III, Madrid, Spain). Her working experience has been in the Chilean Ministry of Health at the Coquimbo Regional Health Authority (5 years). Then, between 2001 and 2008 she worked in different projects and as Medical Coordinator in capital with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tanzania (Cholera Preparedness and outbreak control, Malaria, HIV and AIDS, Refugee Camp); Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan (Tuberculosis DOTS program and Pilot MDR-TB hospital in Nukus); South and North Sudan (Leshmaniasis, Pediatric Hospital, Primary Health Care, Nutritional Programs and TB) and Kenya (HIV-AIDS and TB).

Currently she is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad Católica del Norte in Coquimbo, Chile. She teaches Public Health, Epidemiology and Occupational Health to medicine students and she is the Director of the Master in Public Health since 2009.

From 2010 Muriel is involved in a research financed by FONDEF-CONICYT (Chilean National Commission for Science and Investigation) on Occupational Health arena titled “Assessing biomarkers and neuropsychological outcomes in rural populations exposed to organophosphate pesticides in Chile”, that is her PhD thesis since 2013. The main purpose of the study is to develop the measurement of Acyl-peptide-hydrolase (ACPH) activity as a novel erythrocyte biomarker that accounts for the early diagnosis of chronic exposure to OPP, associated to neuropsychological impairment.

Recently, in May 2014, she was elected President of the Chilean Society of Epidemiology (SOCHEPI) for 2-years period.