Good News

MAE student Ximena Tolosa has been selected to participate in the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance’s Health Emergencies in Large Populations (H.E.L.P.) course, held in collaboration with the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) and University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Office of Public Health Studies from 30 July to 10 August 2018 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Conferences, Workshops and Seminars

Martyn Kirk attended two workshops in July; one on the regulation of antimicrobial usage and resistant infections in Australia held at the Doherty Institute and another of the burden of vaccine preventable diseases at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Katie Glass gave at talk at the University of Cambridge on “Modelling avian influenza outbreak risk in the Australian chicken industry”.

MAE student Aurysia Hii has had her abstract “Epidemic intelligence needs of stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region, 2017” accepted into the AEA 2018 program as a rapid fire and poster presentation.

MAE student Bernadette Kenny has had her abstract “A protracted outbreak of Salmonella Hessarek infection associated with one brand of eggs – South Australia, March 2017-June 2018” accepted for oral presentation at the 9^th International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases, Zurich, Switzerland.

Grants and consultancies

Brett Lidbury was engaged in a consultancy for the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) to assist colleagues in Perth with a national stocktake of Genetic tests performed through Pathology departments in Australia. The support provided focussed primarily on the extraction of data from surveys, to allow the effective analysis of aggregated data required ultimately to inform the RCPA and the Commonwealth Government on alterations to testing trends, as well as the introduction of new genetic testing platforms and protocols.

Martyn Kirk, Ross Andrews, Tambri Housen, and Kerri Viney were awarded funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Stronger Systems for Health Security commencing in 2018:

• Durrheim D, Kirk M, Viney K, Ranmuthugala G, Housen T, Rosewell A. “Accelerating the Development of Evidence-based Policy and Practice (ADEPPt) in Papua New Guinea”. $1.48 million.
• Viney K (CI I). “Combating the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistant infectious diseases in Vietnam: the V-RESIST study.” $2,475,762.
• Francis J, Ralph A, Brewster D, Martins N, Martins J, Andrews R, Krause V, Coatsworth N, Baird R, Fancourt N. Kirk M (AI). “Surveillance Training, Research Opportunities and National Guidelines for communicable disease control in Timor-Leste (STRONG TL)”. $2,112,756.45.

Engagement and Outreach

Danielle Ingle is giving a talk at the Australian Society of Microbiology Victorian Branch Public Health Night with Marion Easton from the Department of Health and Human Services Victoria on the 1^st of August on “Antimicrobial Resistance in Enteric Pathogens”.

Andrea Parisi is currently visiting Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, working on a project investigating sources of antimicrobial resistant Salmonella in humans.

Publications

• Sheel M, Kirk MD. Parasitic and parachute research in global health. Lancet Glob Health. 2018 Aug;6(8):e839. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(18)30310-3. PubMed PMID: 30012264.
• Sheel M, Sheridan S, Gass K, Won K, Fuimaono S, Kirk M, Gonzales A, Hedtke SM, Graves PM, Lau CL. Identifying residual transmission of lymphatic filariasis after mass drug administration: Comparing school-based versus community-based surveillance - American Samoa, 2016. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2018 Jul 16;12(7):e0006583. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0006583. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 30011276. 
• Aik J, Heywood AE, Newall AT, Ng LC, Kirk MD, Turner R. Climate variability and salmonellosis in Singapore - A time series analysis. Sci Total Environ. 2018 Oct 15;639:1261-1267. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.254. Epub 2018 May 26. PubMed PMID: 29929293.
• Fearnley E, Lal A, Bates J, Stafford R, Kirk M, Glass K. (2018) Salmonella source attribution in a subtropical state of Australia: capturing environmental reservoirs of infection Epidemiology & Infection (in press, accepted July 2018).
• Alene KA, Clements ACA, McBryde ES, Jaramilo E, Lonnroth K, Shaweno D, Gulliver A, Viney K.  Mental health disorders, social stressors, and health-related quality of life in patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Infection (in press), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inf.2018.07.007.