Global Burden and Challenges of Melioidosis

 Direk Limmathurotsakul (Associate Professor, Mahidol University) studied medicine at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He obtained a PhD in Life and Biomolecular sciences from the Open University, UK, in 2008, and an MSc in Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2009. Since 2004, he has been working at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Mahidol University, mainly on melioidosis. He also works on sepsis and antimicrobial resistance. From 2012–present (2019), Direk has also run a Wellcome Trust-funded Intermediate Fellowship programme on melioidosis. He is also chair of the International Melioidosis Society (http://www.melioidosis.info) and the Melioidosis Threat Reduction Network (Melioidosis TRN). Direk has convened and contributed to a number of meetings about melioidosis between researchers and policy makers in multiple countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Brazil. These have helped to attract the attention of public health officials and policy makers, with the result that at last actions are being taken to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of melioidosis in many tropical countries. 

David Dance (Honorary Visiting Research Fellow, University of Oxford; Honorary Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) studied medicine at the University of Bristol. He then trained in microbiology with the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) in Southampton and London, completing an MSc in Medical Microbiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1984 and Membership of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1986. From 1986 to 1990 he helped to establish clinical, microbiological, and epidemiological studies on melioidosis in northeast Thailand, which continue to this day. He returned to England for 20 years, working for the PHLS in Plymouth and the Health Protection Agency, and serving on the Councils of the Royal College of Pathologists and the British Infection Society and the Executive Committee of the Association of Medical Microbiologists. He returned to Asia in 2010, working at the Lao-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital-Welcome Trust Research Unit. Melioidosis has been his main research interest for the past 33 years, although he has also published on a wide range of other bacterial infections.