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Understanding the geospatial distribution of influenza infection and the risk factors associated with infection clustering can inform targeted preventive interventions. We conducted a geospatial analysis to investigate the spatial patterns and identify drivers of medically attended influenza infection across all age groups in Western Australia.
The abundant skin commensal, Staphylococcus epidermidis, is the leading cause of late-onset sepsis (LOS) in preterm infants but rarely causes infections in term infants and adults. Staphylococcal virulence mechanisms and the role of the preterm immune responses in driving these life-threatening infections remain poorly understood.
Asha Jacinta Bernadette Bowen Walton Ricciardo BA MBBS DCH FRACP PhD GAICD FAHMS OAM MBBS (hon) DCH FACD Head, Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention
Rheumatic heart disease, a major cause of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries, results from acute rheumatic fever (ARF), for which no diagnostic test currently exists. The ARF Diagnosis Collaborative Network (ARC Network) was established to address this gap by recruiting a rigorously phenotyped, globally representative cohort of children and adolescents with ARF and controls to support biomarker discovery.
Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) is a common infection at birth with the potential to cause significant and permanent morbidity, most commonly hearing loss. Targeted cCMV testing programmes use hearing loss as an indicator of an infant being at high risk of the infection and thereby can 'target' or focus testing on those at greatest risk. Australian and International guidelines recommend that high-risk infants be offered cCMV testing, yet across Australia, a formal testing system does not exist.
Inadequate housing and living conditions underpin significant health and wellbeing inequality in Australia, particularly for Indigenous people. This review aimed to define infectious disease (ID) outcomes used to measure the health impact of inadequate housing in Australia within a research context.
Although uncommon, invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) results in death in 5%-10% of cases in healthy children and adolescents. This study aimed to examine demographics, clinical presentation, treatment and outcomes of Australian children hospitalized with IMD during the introduction of the meningococcal vaccine program, overall and by serogroup/disease severity.
The eradication of smallpox is considered one of the greatest achievements of humankind, thanks to vaccination. The widespread availability of childhood vaccines has substantially reduced childhood morbidity and mortality. Devastating infections, such as polio, have almost disappeared due to vaccination. In 2021, it was estimated that vaccination against ten selected pathogens will have averted 69 million deaths between 2000 and 2030. Increases in vaccine coverage and introduction of additional vaccines should reduce lifetime mortality by 72% in the 2019 birth cohort. However, access to vaccines that prevent life-threatening and disabling infectious diseases remains unequal.
Indigenous children in colonised nations experience high rates of health disparities linked to historical trauma resulting from displacement and dispossession, as well as ongoing systemic racism. Skin infections and their complications are one such health inequity, with the highest global burden described in remote-living Australian Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander (hereafter respectfully referred to as Aboriginal) children. Yet despite increasing urbanisation, little is known about the skin infection burden for urban-living Aboriginal children.
For millennia, Aboriginal people's ways of knowing, doing and being were shared through art, song, and dance. Colonisation silenced these ways, affecting loss of self-determination for Aboriginal people. Over the past decade in Australia, hip-hop projects have become culturally appropriate approaches for health promotion.