I was asked to write a commentary on adult vaccination in Singapore, during the course of which I read a number of articles surrounding adult vaccinations in general and Singapore in particular. A handful of things stood out for me: There is no clear or easy way to find the data on vaccination rates among […]
The Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp (Belgium) has been organizing annual colloquia since 1959. This year’s colloquium was on antibiotic resistance, and was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, from 5th to 7th December. I was fortunate enough to be invited for the event, which featured speakers from the ITM (naturally) as well as regional and […]
I had the honour of being invited to attend the workshop and seminar in Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This event – held today and tomorrow – is organized by the Ministry of Health Malaysia in collaboration with the US Embassy in Malaysia as well as the World Health Organization (WHO). It was a far larger […]
The abovementioned conference was held at the Khanh Hoa Convention Centre (the main auditorium resembles concert theatre) in Nha Trang, Vietnam. The primary organisers were the National Hospital for Infectious Diseases (NHTD), Vietnam Society of Infectious Diseases (VSID), Vietnam Clinical of HIV/AIDS Society (VCHAS), Vietnam Society of Parasitology (VSP), Oxford Clinical Research Unit Vietnam (OUCRU), […]
It was a great privilege to be invited for the conference organised by the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Medical Ethics and Law in collaboration with their School of Public Health. Titled “Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance: Meeting the Global Challenge of AMR”, the organizers had invited a formidable line-up of local and international speakers, one […]
I attended the INFECTIONS 2017 conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia on 24th and 25th October. This biannual conference is organized by the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences of Universiti Putra Malaysia. It was a small friendly event. I enjoyed the great hospitality of the hosts, and learned much from the talks, as well as many […]
Before moving on, I thought it would be good to address the “tick issue”. There were a couple of Facebook comments about the Haemaphysalis longicornus photo from Wikipedia, and how this resembled the dog ticks that are prevalent in Singapore. I am by no means a tick expert, but I understand that the predominant tick in Singapore […]
Had to do quite a bit of reading up about this emerging but obscure (at least for Singapore) infectious disease recently. It is actually pretty interesting. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is caused by a member of the Phlebovirus family – the eponymous SFTS virus. The first official report of this disease and its […]
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been visibly busy this month in the area of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The agency released a report on the global pipeline of new antibiotics (including anti-tuberculosis drugs) on 19th September. It can be downloaded here. There is also a new infographic on what WHO considers priority pathogens in addition […]
MIPHIDIC 