London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The COVID-19 pandemic has activated a global health response and mobilised governments, international institutions, the scientific community and many other different actors in a way that has never been seen. It has changed the world and the way we look at health problems. As the world rushed to find efficacious treatments for patients and develop a potential vaccine, antibiotics have been part of their protocols particularly to prevent secondary bacterial infections. How this has affected antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the current problems of excess use and access is still unknown.  

In this lecture, Laura Piddock will discuss some of the lessons we can learn from how the global health community have reacted to this challenge.

Speaker 

Professor Laura Piddock, Scientific Director, GARDP

Laura Piddock joined GARDP in January 2018. As GARDP’s Scientific Director, Laura leads the Discovery and Exploratory Research and External Scientific Affairs programmes (including REVIVE). She also contributes to GARDP’s Policy & Advocacy activities. Laura is also Professor of Microbiology at the University of Birmingham, UK where she leads a research team that focuses on understanding regulation (switching on and off) of bacterial multidrug resistance (MDR) efflux pumps. Laura has published over 250 articles and co-authored 9 reports to the UK government or WHO; she has given over 200 presentations at international conferences.  

In 2001, Prof Piddock was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. In 2017, she was appointed as a founding Fellow of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Until September 2017, Laura was the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy Chair in Public Engagement and in this role was the Director of Antibiotic Action and led the secretariat of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Antibiotics from 2012 – 2017. Furthermore, until December 2018 she was the Chair of the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance Scientific Advisory Committee.  

Laura frequently contributes to both the local, national, and international media (print, radio, television and digital) and has been interviewed, advised on, and appeared in, several documentaries for numerous global networks including BBC (One, Two, Four, Radio 2, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live), Al Jazeera, CNN, Channel 4 and Sky News. 

 _{*GARDP’s Discovery and Exploratory research activities currently focus on two Gram-negative bacterial species (Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii) on WHO’s critical priority list - these often cause difficult-to-treat hospital-acquired infections, including bloodstream infections. Scientific Affairs encompasses a range of activities including webinars, co-organising the annual Antimicrobial Chemotherapy conference with British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC), Viewpoint articles and an Antimicrobial Encyclopaedia.} 

Please note that the recording link will be listed on this page when available 

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