Training local Karen and Burman women as skilled birth attendants in refugee settings resulted in no adverse perinatal outcomes and many positive outcomes such as a drop in stillbirths and infant deaths and more babies being born in clinics rather than at home, says a new study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Oxford Professor of Tropical Medicine Kevin Marsh is a principal investigator at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya, as well as senior adviser to the African Academy of Sciences. His award recognises his sustained efforts to control and eradicate malaria, which impacts the health of tens of millions of African children.
Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work with Charles Babbage on the early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Ada Lovelace Day is an annual international event to celebrate the achievements of women in Science, Engineering, Technology and Maths.
Medical and health teaching and research at Oxford University has been ranked as the world's best for the sixth year running in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The discipline-specific tables, released today, follow on from last week's announcement that Oxford has been ranked the top university in the world by the same publication \u2013 the first time a UK institution has been awarded the accolade.
A study by the international Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) collaboration (which includes researchers from OUCRU), published in The Lancet, analyzed each country\u2019s progress toward achieving the United Nation\u2019s health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets by creating an overall SDG Index score. Countries were then ranked by their scores to show which nations are closest to achieving the targets, and Vietnam stands out as having achieved significant progress.
Researchers from the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam have shown that using a rapid (5-minute) test can reduce antibiotic misuse for respiratory infections. Cutting the number of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions is a key way to prevent the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections.
Oxford becomes the first British university ever to occupy top position in the global table, which judges the performance of 980 universities across 79 countries.
The University of Oxford's Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe has won one of the most prestigious prizes in medicine. Since 1945, the Lasker Awards has recognised the contributions of scientists, physicians, and public servants who have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of human disease. Many past Lasker winners have gone on to be awarded Nobel prizes.
Multidrug-resistant bacterial infections cause more than 19,000 excess deaths a year in Thailand alone, according to a study published today in eLife Sciences Publications. In a first for Thailand, the study systematically examined microbiology laboratory and hospital databases from nine public hospitals in Northeast Thailand and compared them to Thailand\u2019s national death registry to estimate that 19,122 deaths in Thailand in 2010 were excess deaths caused by multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.
This public engagement project in Battambang Province, western Cambodia, was co-organised by the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit and the Cambodian National Malaria Control Programme. Drama and music are used as a means of communication to encourage people to get early diagnosis and treatment, to use insecticide treated bednets, and to raise awareness about the risks of malaria.
Do you want to know more about Open Access? Find out about Act on Acceptance & ORCID from an expert? Book a place for our session on Tuesday 23rd August, 2-3pm in Room B at the WTCHG. Juliet Ralph, the Open Access Subject librarian, will be available for your toughest questions.
On Thur 21 July, the University of Health Sciences, Ministry of Health in collaboration with LOMWRU held the first Vientiane Science Caf\u00e9 event in Laos. More than 50 students and staff of the Faculties of Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Nursing Sciences, Medical Technology, Basic Sciences, and Public Health attended the two hour-long event.
We are delighted to announce that several MORU Network colleagues were honoured in the recent University of Oxford Recognition of Distinction rounds. Clockwise from top left: Joel Tarning was awarded the title of Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Lisa White Professor of Modelling and Epidemiology. Stuart Blacksell, Susanna Dunachie, Paul Turner, Richard Maude, Frank Smithuis and Phaik Yeong Cheah were each awarded the title of Associate Professor.
Last week, the Village Drama Against Malaria initiative held its first performance in O Treng (Reed River), a remote rural Cambodian village that suffers from malaria. Over 200 people, more than half the village, attended the performance, which featured five village singers and primary school kids dressed as mosquitoes singing a song about malaria.
The rapid decline in effectiveness of a widely used anti-malaria drug treatment on the Thailand-Myanmar border is linked to the increasing prevalence of specific mutations in the malaria parasite itself, according to a paper published in The Clinical infectious Disease Journal.
Professor Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust in the UK, led a review panel team to Nairobi and Kilifi in Kenya last week, to assess projects that had been ongoing over the past five years. The structural and project assessment review was conducted on Monday through to Wednesday.
The Kenya Paediatric Association diner on the 28th of April 2016 at the Boma Hotel in Eldoret, was the climax of the KPA annual meeting that brought together over 300 delegates from the health sector in Kenya. This annual meeting brought together pediatricians, researchers, medical officers and other professionals in the health sector to deliberate on the best ways of improving service delivery to children all over Kenya.
New and unexpected health threats have emerged in Asia that could weigh on the world's fastest growing and most dynamic region. Diseases associated with obesity and smoking are rising, and will cause tens of millions of deaths from heart and lung disease and cancer in coming decades. But alongside these lifestyle-associated conditions, the old foe of infectious disease is reemerging and threatens to cause an even greater health and economic disaster.
The Pint of Science festival aims to deliver interesting and relevant talks on the latest science research in an accessible format to the public \u2013 all in the pub! We want to provide a platform which allows people to discuss research with the people who carry it out - no prior knowledge of the subject is required.
Data sharing is increasingly required by academic journals and funders of research, and the benefits of sharing participant level clinical research data for secondary or meta-analysis are widely championed among the research community. However, there is a need to ensure that data sharing is truly useful and that those with limited research capacity are not inadvertently disadvantaged.
No one knows exactly why resistance to malaria drugs always emerges first in this remote western province of Cambodia, nestled in the Cardamom Mountains. \u201cThe reasons are as much social as biological,\u201d says malariologist Tom Peto, who is here in this dusty, unremarkable-looking town battling the latest threat to global malaria control: multiple drug\u2013resistant (MDR) malaria.
What is the key to success for women who work in science? A new website, launched this week, delves into the experiences of successful women in science at the University of Oxford, through a collection of video narratives.
Results of the Wellcome Trust funded trial of the experimental anti-Ebola drug TKM-130803 have been published today in PLOS Medicine. Using a novel approach designed to get rapid indications of a drug's effectiveness, the trial showed that at the dose given the drug did not improve survival compared to historic controls.
Despite its discovery in Uganda in 1947 little is known about Zika virus (ZIKV) and its importance as a cause of illness in East Africa. Now, researchers at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Programme in Kilifi, Kenya and collaborators at other research centres in the region have embarked on a landmark study to address several of these knowledge gaps.
The efforts of two Oxford University tropical diseases experts have been recognised by the Vietnamese government. Professors Peter Horby and Heiman Wertheim were awarded the Vietnam Ministry of Health's Medal for the People's Health at a ceremony in Hanoi celebrating 10 years of collaboration between the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases and the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit.
470,000 babies die each year in Africa on the day they are born. This figure increases to 1 million deaths within the first 28 days. The LIFE project by Mike English and his team directly addresses this avoidable tragedy by using low-cost smartphones to give as many healthcare workers as possible the knowledge they need to provide life-saving treatment to mothers and newborns.
The Tracking Resistance to Artemisinin Collaboration II (TRACII) study has begun recruitment, with about 180 subjects enrolled to date in 12 sites in seven countries in Asia and Africa, researchers announced at the second TRACII investigators\u2019 meeting held 7 March in Bangkok.
Professor Mike English is interviewed on BBC Radio (~ 30 seconds in) about a new smartphone app that could potentially save many newborn babies in Africa, by providing virtual training to healthcare workers. The team is hoping to raise crowdfunding for the app, so that it can be used on the ground soon.
Dr Joel Tarning from MORU discusses his New England Journal of Medicine editorial on treating malaria in pregnancy, outlining new evidence on the effectiveness of artemisinin-combination therapies in pregnant women with malaria.
A team from the Department of International Development (DFID), based in Nairobi, met with Senior Managers at the KEMRI - Wellcome Trust Nairobi offices including the Executive Director, Prof. Philip Bejon, on the 4th of March 2016. The DFID team was led by Lizzie Smith, Head of Profession Health.
MSc students from the CTMGH's International Health and Tropical Medicine course speak at the Oxford Union, on a debate about climate change and its effects on health. The debate takes place on Tuesday 15th March, 5 pm for a 5.30 pm start. Topics will be announced to the students the week before. All welcome, no pre-booking required.
Malaria kills almost 600,000 people a year, most of whom are African children, according to the World Health Organisation. Yet, millions of other people recover from an infected mosquito bite without succumbing to the life-threatening complications, especially with access to effective drug regimens.
Oxford University scientists carry out clinical trials for a range of medical conditions every year. The hope with each one is that it could lead to a viable treatment to cure or alleviate that condition. It is easy, therefore, to think that a successful trial is one that produces such a treatment, while any other result is a failure. Not so, as a recent study from Oxford's researchers in South East Asia shows.
As part of the Tropical Medicine Global Health Seminar, Professor Peter Horby provides a rapid update (now available online) about the spreading Zika virus epidemic.
Artemisinins, the most effective antimalarials available, should be endorsed in the first trimester of pregnancy to ensure optimal treatment of falciparum malaria in pregnant women, reports a paper published today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The aim of the Zika website, developed by the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Infection Consortium (ISARIC) and hosted by the Global Health Network (tGHN), is to provide a platform for sharing and developing research priorities, protocols and data capture systems alongside the latest epidemiological and clinical management information about Zika infection.
The Oxford University Science Blog features a Q&A with Professor Trudie Lang, who heads the Global Health Network. The interview discusses why it is important to build research capacity in places where research doesn't normally happen, and how the response to Zika outbreak has learnt from the Ebola clinical trials.
Researchers from the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam have completed what is probably the largest ever controlled trial of tuberculous meningitis. The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Melioidosis, a difficult to diagnose deadly bacterial disease, is likely to be present in many more countries than previously thought, reports a paper published online today in the journal Nature Microbiology. The study predicts that melioidosis is present in 79 countries, including 34 that have never reported the disease.
There are currently no effective treatments for Ebola, but blood plasma from people who have survived Ebola may be one potential treatment: this component of blood may contain antibodies that likely helped survivors successfully fight off the disease.
On 14 Dec, Mr Gilles Garachon, the French Ambassador to Thailand, arrived at Mae Sot in Thailand to present France\u2019s highest award, l'Ordre National de la L\u00e9gion d\u2019honneur, to Professor Fran\u00e7ois Nosten, Head of MORU\u2019s Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU). The award is in recognition of Professsor Nosten's work over three decades fighting malaria.
Although the Wang Pha clinic was established to treat malaria, it hasn't had a malaria case at all in several days. Now, patients come with other ailments or to visit the maternity ward. \"When no one is worried, that's when we have to worry,\" said professor Francois Nosten, director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, which includes Wang Pha and four other clinics along the Thai-Myanmar border.
In the past few months, the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) has begun a campaign to make pregnant Karen women and their husbands aware of the importance of pre-conceptual folate to prevent neural tube defects in newborns.
The inaugural competition for this prize is a Student Poster Competition, which will be held at MORU Bangkok, between 11am-2pm on Monday 30th November 2015 in the Similan Room. Niklas was a great advocate of student activity, and supervised numerous students as part of his role as Head of Pharmacology.
The Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) led Malaria Elimination Task Force has undertaken mass drug administration campaigns in Eastern Karen State, Myanmar in areas with a high sub microscopic Plasmodium falciparum parasite prevalence.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has approved a three-year grant that will lead to an expansion of the pharmacometric research group within MORU\u2019s Department of Clinical Pharmacology.
The European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) today awarded the Giorgio Segr\u00e9 Prize to Professor Joel Tarning for his scientific research work on the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of antimalarial drugs in vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and young children.
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