Posted 10/10/2018. Community volunteers are used to deliver a number of healthcare interventions. Although these volunteers are not paid, their time still has an economic value, known as an opportunity cost. Dr Hugo Turner and colleagues found that this economic value is significant for mass drug administration programs: for the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control alone it would be valued at US$60-90 million.
Posted 02/10/2018. Rising prevalence of HIV drug resistance in low and middle-income countries poses a growing threat to the HIV response. To curb resistance, enhanced strategies are needed that improve quality of ART care and treatment. Raph Hamers reviews contemporary data and highlights the potential impact and resistance risks of novel ART strategies and knowledge gaps.
Posted 25/09/2018. Invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella disease is common in parts of Africa; there is an ill-defined burden in Asia. Stephen Baker and colleagues describe a new variant of Multi-Drug Resistant Salmonella associated with invasive disease in Vietnam. The identification of this organism highlights new ways zoonotic pathogens can exploit human niches to cause serious infections.
Posted 10/07/2018. The decline of malaria in Vietnam can largely be attributed to the use of artemisinin-combination therapy (ACT) for case management. Recent analyses from Africa showed that insecticide-treated nets had the greatest effect on lowering malaria prevalence, suggesting that the success of interventions is region-specific. Malaria elimination efforts should focus on both vector control and increased access to ACT.
Posted 19/06/2018. Many people with pre-existing heart problems (including heart attack, pacemaker implantation, arrhythmia), high blood pressure and even past history of a stroke seek advice regarding high altitude travel ( > 2500m) for recreation, meetings or pilgrimages. Dr Buddha Basnyat and colleagues succinctly try to address these conditions at altitude and make reasonable recommendations in the face of limited data.
Posted 30/05/2018. Drug resistant bacterial infections are becoming a major problem. Genomics has become a fundamental tool for tracking bacteria and provides us with the data and knowledge to begin to initiate a response. Stephen Baker and colleagues discuss how resistant bacteria emerge and spread and outline some approaches and knowledge gaps that can help us tackle this global heath emergency.
Posted 01/05/2018. Hand, foot and mouth disease is a major public-health issue in Asia. Herein, Dr Tan and colleagues at OUCRU report the first detection of emerging coxsackievirus A6 among hand, foot and mouth disease patients in Vietnam, and document how this emerging virus evolves and spreads in space and time.
Posted 27/02/2018. The human papilloma virus is primarily known as the causative agent of cervical cancer, but it also causes anal cancer. It is easily transmitted, but often cleared, and only few infections develop
Posted 09/01/2018. OUCRU researcher Lauren Carrington has provided evidence supporting the introduction of Wolbachia, a bacteria that manipulates its host reproductive system, into areas where there are dengue virus-transmitting mosquitoes, as a biocontrol method to reduce the transmission of dengue and other arboviruses.
Posted 25/10/2017. Professor Stephen Baker recruited more than 3,000 children with severe diarrhoea in high usage, high resistance settings in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He found that antimicrobial usage did not result in reducing the time of symptoms, and actually prolonged it in most cases.
Posted 25/07/2017. Professor Jeremy Day and fellow researchers from OUCRU, in collaboration with colleagues from the Genome Institute Singapore, have published the first whole genome sequences of Vietnamese isolates of the yeast Cryptococcus neoformans, in an attempt to better understand the genes that enable some families of this usually accidental pathogen to cause disease in people with normal immune systems.
Posted 30/06/2017. Acute mountain sickness is a potentially life-threatening illness for sojourners to high altitude (> 2500m). Where pharmacological prophylaxis is indicated, Diamox is the drug of choice, but it has distressing side-effects. This Everest-based, double-blind, randomized controlled trial revealed that paracetamol, like ibuprofen, could potentially replace Diamox for prophylaxis.
Posted 30/05/2017. Rotavirus is a complex RNA virus with a genome comprised of multiple segments. The virus causes diarrhoea and extracting pure virus from stool samples limits our ability to sequence its genome. A team led by Professor Stephen Baker developed a new capture/purification method for rotavirus allowing us to perform whole genome sequencing from stool samples for the first time.
Posted 25/04/2017. South Asia, which includes Nepal, is a hub for typhoid fever. Trials conducted in Nepal since 2005 confirm that fluoroquinolones are failing for typhoid fever treatment. The WHO and health ministries in the region recommend fluroquionolones as the drugs of choice for typhoid fever. This recommendation needs to be changed.
Posted 07/04/2017. Collaboration between photographer Pearl Gan and Professor Kevin Baird from our EOCRU unit in Jakarta, Indonesia, this photographic project aims to raise public awareness of malaria as a serious health problem for the region by telling the human story of Asia\u2019s invisible malaria burden.
Posted 31/03/2017. Using epidemiological and microbiological approaches and sequencing data, this study, led by Prof. Constance Schultsz of the Academic Medical Center and Assoc. Prof. Ngo Thi Hoa, shows that usage of antimicrobials in food animal production selects for antimicrobial resistant bacteria (AMRB) in animals, which increases the risk for faecal colonisation of AMRB in humans.
![\"Hugo](\"https://www.tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk/news/research-highlights/valuing-the-unpaid-contribution-of-community-health-volunteers-to-mass-drug-administration-programs/responsive_image?ratio=r16x9&scale=w760\")
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