Emerging Infectious Disease

Aaditeshwar Seth of OnionDev Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in India in collaboration with the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) via the Tika Vaani project, will develop a smartphone application and digital processing techniques to digitize childhood immunization data from photographs of vaccination cards taken by health workers during clinic visits and store the data in a cloud to monitor adherence and send reminders to families.

Ali Turab of IRD Global Ltd. in Singapore will develop a decision support tool that can be integrated with digital immunization registries to automatically construct optimal appointment schedules for every child that can adjust for missed immunizations and the introduction of new vaccines. A large majority of children, in both developing and developed countries, are not immunized at the recommended times, which can increase the risk of severe diseases.

The project aims to monitor AMR in microorganisms of the urinary tract and correlate it with the genetic determinants of resistance in animal enterobacteria. The study results will be disseminated in order to inform potential changes to guidelines regarding selection of the appropriate antimicrobials first-line treatment for urinary tract infections (UTI).

This project will test a sustainable solar oxidation system as a way to remove antibiotic resistant bacteria from wastewater. The hypothesis is that this technology can enable the inactivation of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the elimination of antibiotic resistant genes from effluents in Brazil.

The project proposes to characterize the resistant determinants of microbial communities from key sources in hospitals, environment and farms to model the dynamics of the flow of antibiotic resistant microorganisms. The goal is to understand how the hospital environment and animal farming affect the ecology of antibiotic resistance movement. The project will rely on a methodology that allows the analysis of genes related to antibiotic resistance in a complex microbial community derived from specific samples instead of culture based methods for AMR identification.

This project proposes the development of the One Health Brazilian Resistance (OneBR), a curated and integrated genomic database. OneBR will use algorithms based on artificial intelligence to conduct surveillance, diagnosis, management and treatment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the human-animal-environment interface. The goal is for this platform to be used by Brazilian health professionals in diverse settings, particularly within the Unified Healthcare System (SUS).

Muriel Vray of Institut Pasteur of Dakar in Senegal will evaluate a loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay (LAMP), a simple, robust and inexpensive nucleic acid amplification assay, to quantify/semi-quantify hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA levels in Senegal. In the first step, they will validate the assay in a reference laboratory in Dakar, compared with the reference standard PCR assay. In the second step, they will validate the assay in a decentralized context at a rural health center in Senegal. They will also evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the use of LAMP.

Diawo Diallo of Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal will validate and implement a timely and up-to-date surveillance system of zika virus prevalence in the mosquito population in the Kédougou area using an innovative integrated device developed by Gopaul from Institut Pasteur in Paris. This 3-in-1 device includes a mosquito trap, an analysis station that will carry an antibody-based detection system with an easy to read color change result and a mapping software to create a real-time map of arbovirus infected mosquitoes.

Fredrik Westerlund of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden will develop a portable device for low-income settings based on a smartphone to identify antimicrobial resistance genes on bacterial plasmid DNA, which is a major source of antibiotic resistance. Plasmids are small pieces of circular DNA that are readily transferred between different bacteria. Current methods for characterizing them are costly and require sophisticated equipment.

Gautam Dantas of Washington University in the U.S. will measure the effect of the routine use of antibiotics to treat severe malnutrition or to minimize the risk of HIV infection in young children, on the bacterial populations and antimicrobial resistance genes in the gut. These currently recommended clinical practices might promote the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes to pathogenic bacteria, making infections impossible to treat. They will analyze fecal samples taken at different time-points from 234 children as part of two completed trials in Nigeria and South Africa.