RETS - Rede Internacional de Educação de Técnicos em Saúde

The central topic of the sixth edition of the RETS magazine, which is exceptionally issued with 20 pages instead of the traditional 16, is interculturality.   People from different cultures and different languages throughout the world have to live together and communicate with each other, and this does not always occur in a constructive manner. Therefore, the idea is to try and provide at least some aspects of the interculturality concept, thus contributing towards its understanding and the strengthening of a discussion that is attracting increasing interest among health and education professionals.

 How do cultural relations affect the outcome of health actions? How to think about health and education policies in multicultural contexts? How to train health professionals to deal with cultural differences by respecting other forms of knowledge and other beliefs? These are just some of the many questions that the subject arouses and that we shall discuss in our cover story in the interview with Bolivia-rooted Dutch researcher Ineke Dibbits and in the report of an intercultural training experience conducted by professionals of the National Apprenticeship Service (SENA) of Colombia.

 In the “Glossary” section, we finalize discussions regarding the term “Education of health technicians” with a brief overview of the critical theories of Brazilian educators Paulo Freire and Demerval Saviani.

In “Network News”, we highlight the progress made by the HealthTechnical Schools Network (RETS-USAN), whose creation was officially recognized at the last meeting of USAN-Health, and the CPLP (CPLP-RETS) which has recently defined the organization of a course focused on the training of teachers and the restructuring of educational institutions in African countries of the Community.  Other news are the small changes implemented in our webpage, since these aim to meet, as far as possible, some suggestions and demands raised by the 2nd General Meeting of the Network as we await the opportunity to conceive a new website design that best fits our needs.

Happy reading!

RETS Executive Secretariat