Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy

At the 1^st Global Forum on Bacterial Infections we’ll be piloting “hands-on sessions” focused on the more practical aspects of containing antibiotic resistance.  These workshops for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers are designed to be small, intensive, and interactive.  Space is limited, so we’ve opened up pre-registration on the Global Forum website (click on a hands-on session and you’ll see the form to sign up).  There are six sessions in total - I’m going to preview just a few of them here:

Hand-on session 5: Analyzing and Understanding Hospital-Level Resistance Data (5 October 9:45 – 12:45)
 This session emerged from the understanding that surveillance data from low-resource settings is often scarce.  It will draw on a few examples where data collections is strong and demonstrate to participants how to take that data and understand and interpret the burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in a local hospital setting.  The session will include hospital–level examples from Argentina, India, Kenya and South Africa, as well as a broader discussion on how to strengthen data collection and improve quality control.  Should be really interesting, and it’s limited to 45 people. 

Hands-on Session 2: Quality Control Requirements for Laboratory Certification in India (4 October, 14:00 - 15:00)
This is a crucial session for microbiologists interested in quality control certification in India.  I spoke with the leader of this session, Dr Chand Wattal of Sir Ganga Ram hospital in New Delhi, a few days ago about what he had planned for this workshop, and here’s what you can expect: a strong grounding in why quality control for microbiology labs is essential, an interactive dialogue about what quality control means, and finally, the nuts of bolts of how to apply for accreditation in India.  It will also include discussion of the essential role of microbiologists in contributing to antibiotics policies. 

Hands-on Session 6: Introducing PneuMOD (5 October, 14:15 -15:45)
Curious about the ins and outs of disease modeling?  CDDEP’s resident modeling expert Dr David Smith will lead an interactive workshop on PneuMOD, a tool he’s developing to model pneumococcal disease and potential interventions to reduce its global health burden.  Pneumococcal diseases are responsible for an estimated 826,000 deaths of children under the age of five each year, and the model is designed to take into account various uncertainties around reducing this mortality, including the impact of vaccines on serotype distribution, and emerging resistance to antibiotic treatment. 

There are six hands-on sessions in total – the other three are Running Effective Campaigns to Raise Awareness about Drug Resistance (1), How to Build Local Coalitions for Containing Drug Resistance: Country-Level and Regional Experiences (3), and ResistanceMap: Communicating Antimicrobial Resistance Trends through GIS and a Composite Drug Resistance Index (4).  Space is limited in each session, so we highly recommend pre-registering.

Image credit: Flickr: CTSIatUCSF