In 2015, I started working on the ‘BARNARDS’ project which aimed to assess the burden of antibiotic resistance in neonates from developing societies, funded by the Gates foundation. The findings from this project demonstrated the vast extent of antibiotic resistance in Low- and middle- income countries where there is currently a sparsity of data, compared to high income countries. This study found high prevalence of resistance genes in normal flora of adults in addition to high antibiotic resistance of pathogens causing sepsis in neonates across sites in Africa and South East Asia. I am very interested to further investigate this and to contribute towards tackling gaps in our current knowledge in this area. I currently also work on ‘CUT-SEC’ funded by the BBSRC, investigating potential transmission of bacteria and mobile antibiotic resistance genes between agriculture, the environment and human carriage and infection in China and Thailand. This explores the one health approach and will further our understanding of how antibiotics applied in agriculture, particularly for growth promotion and associated antibiotic resistance can impact human health.
