October report for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Modelling

2 October 2018

Good News

Congratulations to Angus McLure who submitted his PhD thesis for examination.

Welcome to Pip Binns who has joined the MAE team and will be coordinating the ASEAN fellow’s scholarship program.

Conferences, Workshops and Seminars

Martyn Kirk presented on ‘The epidemiology of Campylobacter in Australia’ at a COMPARE working group meeting in Brest, France.

MAE student Patiyan Anderson presented at two conferences in September: “Evaluation of the surveillance system for yellow fever at the Australian border” at the NT Centre for Disease Control Conference in Darwin and “Vancomycin resistant enterococci in the neonatal intensive care unit at Canberra Hospital – an unfortunate premiere” at the Australian Public Health Conference in Cairns.

Grants & consultancies

MAE student Tamara Riley received a travel grant from the Centre of Research Excellence in Ear and Hearing Health in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to attend the 2018 Otitis Media Australia Conference (OMOZ2018) in Darwin.

Engagement and Outreach

Ben Polkinghorne represented the MAE at a meeting in Fiji on Health Emergency Risk Management, Preventing, Preparing for and Responding to Health Emergencies in the Pacific.

Steph Davis and Emma Field travelled to Cambodia and Laos to discuss the MAE ASEAN fellows program.

MAE student Aurysia Hii will be taking an 8 week placement with WPRO working on event based surveillance.

Martyn Kirk met with Dr Oliver Morgan, Head of Health Emergencies and Pat Drury, Dr Babatunde Oluwe, Dr Alex Rosewell, and Renee Christiansen at the World Health Organization to discuss deployment of personnel into outbreaks. While at the World Health Organization, Martyn met with Dr Angelika Tritscher to discuss emerging issues of per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances in food.

Andrea Parisi worked on projects investigating population structure of nontyphoidal Salmonella and sources of antimicrobial resistance in humans at Oxford University Clinical Research Unit and Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Publications

  • Varrone L, Stafford RJ, Lilly K, Selvey L, Glass K, Ford L, Bulach D, Kirk MD. (2018) Investigating locally-relevant risk factors for Campylobacter infection in Australia: protocol for a case-control study and genomic analysis. BMJ Open (in press, accepted September 2018).

Ford L, McEwen S, Glass K. (2018) Trends of viral gastroenteritis in the Australian Capital Territory. Communicable Diseases Intelligence (in press, accepted September