Ngo Thi Hoa: Zoonotic diseases and community health

My name is Ngo Thi Hoa and I'm the Head of the Zoonosis Group at OUCRU. I joined OUCRU in 2005 with a fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to return home for good. I then chose to work with an emerging pathogen causing disease in humans, namely Streptococcus suis. This is a pig pathogen; it can cause opportunistic infections in pigs, but amazingly it can cause severe infections in humans, such as bloodstream infection or brain infection. While working with this pathogen, we learned that the pathogen can be resistant to many antibiotics, including those not used for human treatment for these infections. We learned that the antibiotic had been used in the farm, and then we were interested in studying the antimicrobial resistant, originate from farm, which may impact human health.

A recent project we published showed that colistin, actually the last resource antibiotic for human treatment, but used quite commonly in farming, we showed about 25% of the farmers associated with the study farm carry colistin resistant bacteria in their stool sample, and about 12% of non-farmers living the same region also carry that colistin resistant bacteria, which showed evidence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics originating from the farm can spread to farmers and to the community.

In the current zoonosis and antimicrobial resistance research field, we have quite a few big questions. In order to study zoonosis, we know that the One Health concept is very important. Everyone understands what the One Health concept means: it involves the participation of stakeholders from human health, animal health, and environment. But in reality, to have the One Health approach to work effectively and collaboratively, it really is a huge challenge for us, because each of the stakeholders have their own agenda. And then we asked how can we build a capacity to have a One Health sustainable platform to collect data, to generate research-based evidence, to share data as well; especially in a non-outbreak situation. We also ask ourselves how can we research to reduce the use of antimicrobials in the farms, to help to reduce the resistance in the human population? The other question we also ask is how do we understand the mechanisms of the bacteria originating from animals that can cause disease in human.

The work we do indeed has a direct impact to patient care, because if we can prevent antimicrobial resistance in animal populations, we actually proactively prevent infections with antimicrobial resistant pathogens in humans, and it also saves or protects the effectiveness of the antimicrobials existing right now that help us to save lives for patients, when they need it.

The line of research we are doing now is important, because as we all experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, we know that a single zoonotic pathogen can cause a global chaos with global consequences, and antimicrobial resistance is actually a silent pandemic. WHO have identified this as one of the 10 top global health threats. So, by preventing antimicrobial resistance, we actually prevent a coming pandemic. Why should my research be funded? I think we're working on not just a single disease. We're working on preventing a coming pandemic and that will help to safeguard human health from infection, and also safeguard animal health and the stability of our food supplies, and for that we hope it will create a more resilient world to all of us.

This interview was recorded in September 2025.