Our team had a great time this week at Pint of Science 2023, where we had 2 speakers in the “Section on Infection” presenting some of our global clinical trial work in AMR, neonatal sepsis, and antibiotic prescribing policy. The talks were well-received with lots of interesting questions from the audience members. We’re looking forward to participating again next year, and seeing how our work has progressed by then!
The silent pandemic
Our first speaker was Dr Catrin Moore, who is a Senior Lecturer in our team. She described her talk as:
“It’s safe to say everyone has heard of COVID-19, most of us have had the virus and know people who have been affected by it. How many of us have heard of bacterial Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)? This silent pandemic (so called as many of us have not heard of it) killed between approximately 1.27 and 4.95 million people globally in 2019 and many more lives were shortened because of infections with bacteria that were resistant to the treatment given. I will describe some of my work quantifying the number of people who died because of AMR and how we are trying to decrease the death.”
Using antibiotics right
The next speaker was Aislinn Cook, who is a Senior Research Fellow in our team. She explained her topic as:
“In light of rising antibiotic resistance, improving use of our current antibiotics is critically important to ensure patients who need antibiotics can still receive treatment. But questions about how to do this safely and which patient groups are most affected still remain. We’ll take a broad look at the global tools and policies that are being developed to guide antibiotic use and then zoom in on a patient population at high risk for infections that may not be treatable with all current antibiotics.”
Well done to the AMR team speakers for presenting complicated topics and trials in such an engaging and inclusive manner, and also for winning the Science Pub Quiz! We are looking forward to other public engagement opportunities in future where we can continue to share our important work and prompt conversations around the pressing topics of AMR, sepsis, and global prescribing guidelines.
