Human infections are still a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Antimicrobial resistance threatens our ability to treat simple bacterial infections, diseases such as malaria have been drastically reduced but remain a major killer, other such as filariasis and visceral leishmaniasis may be eradicated as a public health problem in the next decade, while diseases such as dengue and ebola continue to increase. Major breakthroughs in personalised medicine, gene therapy and our ability to collect and analyse large data represent opportunities to bring new approaches to tackling human infections. How tractable are they to such approaches, what are our priorities in attempting to reduce the global burden of disease, what progress has been made and what challenges remain? Looking at these grand challenges the talk will summarise progress to date in some of the major insect borne diseases and highlight the challenges that still remain if we are to adopt sustainable integrated solutions to tackling human infections.

Biography

Janet Hemingway is Professor of Vector Biology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. She is also a Senior Technical Advisor on Neglected Tropical Diseases for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Janet has been PI on projects in excess of £60 million including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Innovative Vector Control Consortium. Professor Hemingway was appointed the Director of LSTM in 2001 and stepped down on 1st January 2019, having overseen a period of exceptional growth of the organisation.

Refreshments will be available from 12.30pm onwards.

This lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.

If you are a non-Keele member of staff/student and are coming by car, parking will be available in the Keele Hall Courtyard overflow car park.  All travel information is available on our How to Find Us page.

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