NAMRIP members interviewed for Parliamentary briefing

On 7th November, we welcomed Alana Dowling, a fellow from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), to NAMRIP for a day of discussions and demos.

Alana is currently preparing a POSTnote briefing for Parliament on AMR factors in human and animal pathogens and the environment, and heard about NAMRIP via our website. POSTnotes are four page summaries of public policy issues based on reviews of the research literature and interviews with stakeholders from across academia, industry, government and the third sector. Each publication is launched at a Parliamentary event.

The first interview was with Professor Tim Leighton who described the research underway within NAMRIP and the multidisciplinary approach being taken to tackle the issue of AMR. Alana was able to see some of this research in action with a visit to Professor Leighton’s lab where Christian Cox, Freya Malcher and Mengyang Zhu demonstrated various Starsteam devices.

Visiting Building 85, Alana met with Prof Bill Keevil and Dr Marc Dumont to discuss antimicrobial use in animals and antimicrobial resistance in human pathogens. Dr Sumit Kalsi then gave Alana a tour of his lab and the devices under development to detect anti-microbial resistant genes.

After more discussions over lunch, Alana visited University Hospital Southampton for the final meeting of the day, to discuss the epidemiology of AMR globally with Myron Christodoulides.

Thanks to Yarna Basystyuk from Public Policy at Southampton who assisted in the organisation of this visit.

Update: POSTnote 595 can be downloaded below.