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British Trade Minister Ian Pearson launched the Berkeley Training Center in Macaé, 182 km away from Rio do Janeiro, in the Brazilian southeast, which will be the first Medical training center aimed at the oil and gas industry in Latin America.
The center is a joint project involving the City of Macaé, Berkeley Training center and a consortium of UK companies led by Lancashire Ambulance service. The training unit will be located at Macaé's brand new state of the art city hospital with its emergency and telemedicine center, meeting the needs of the local population and the 35,000 people working in the offshore industry. Macaé, in Rio de Janeiro state is known as Brazil's oil capital because of its proximity to the offshore fields that account for 80% of the country's oil production and 45% of its natural gas. In the inauguration speech Macaé mayor Riverton Mussi said the city population has grown three fold since Brazilian government owned oil giant Petrobras located its operational headquarters there. "The city has been transformed, accommodating workers from all over the country and the world. Currently 10% of Macaé's inhabitants are foreigners", stressed Mussi. "This is an excellent example of how British expertise can help Brazil and other emerging economies develop their sectors. I am delighted that Lancashire Ambulance Service, who have honed their training skills over a number of years, will be passing them on to the other side of the world to help save lives," said Minister Ian Pearson. The UK companies involved in the project are: Lancashire Ambulance Service, which will provide training and accreditation to local health professionals and health & safety personnel offshore; HW Communication, an advanced technology developer specializing in transferring advanced technical concepts and technologies from research laboratory to the marketplace. HW works closely with Lancashire Ambulance Service and is responsible for developing the technical aspects of their RADEEM Telemedicine Systems; PPS (Professional Protection Systems) design, manufacture and market a comprehensive range of Personal Protective Equipment and Protective Industrial Clothing for every type of hazardous environment. "Lancashire Ambulance Service NHS Trust has been working in Brazil since 2001, but this is the most comprehensive and exciting project we have managed to date. We are looking forward to implementing the medical protocols and systems that many countries have recognized as essential for providing high quality medical services for international oil & gas industry clients", pointed out Alan Bolam Director of Commercial Services at the Lancashire Ambulance Service. The training center opening should aid and speed up care for thousands of workers on the almost 500 oil-drilling platforms in the Campos basin, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state with an average production of 1.3 million bpd. "I am confident that British talent and expertise in a wide variety of sectors is second to none but we must maximize the benefits of this. UK companies must fully open their eyes to the current growth and future growth of nations like Brazil, India and South Africa. With all the news headlines about China it would be an easy mistake to not see the potential of many other nations," added Mr. Pearson. Until next February 3, Berkeley and Lancashire Ambulance Service will run two courses aimed at the oil and gas industry at the new facilities: Trauma and Multiple-Victim Accidents with courses given by Professor Nelson Norman, Professor of Medicine, Aberdeen University and Professor Graham Page, A/E Consultant Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. The two UK guests are among the world's top experts in Emergency and Telemedicine. Prof. Norman is an authority on Oil & Gas Remote Medicine and Extreme Temperature Medicine. He was responsible for developing medical training and qualifications for Antarctica expeditions as well as Middle East desert environments. Prof. Page led on the medical response for the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea and has held many high-ranking medical positions in the UK, including Diving Medicine. Mercopress - www.mercopress.com
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
May I use your website to request that if any Brazilian doctor or medic would like exciting work with Frontier Medical, please send your CV to adrienne.allen@frontiermedical.co.uk. Please look at the website too - www.frontiermedical.co.uk.