Early detection of infectious diseases, total monitoring vital

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, Aug 22, 2019: Prominent national and international speakers presented important information on infectious diseases at the third Manipal conference on International Infectious Diseases.  Speaker came up with many aspects of common diseases and some newer ones too.

The conference was organised by Manipal Centre for Infectious Diseases (MAC ID), Prasanna School of Public Health, in association with the Department of Medicine, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, and McGill Global Health Program, Canada, on the theme ‘Tropical Infections and Global Health’.

Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) Vice Chancellor Dr H Vinod Bhat inaugurated the conference. He said that, in the coming days, surveillance should be the way forward for early detection of infectious disease outbreaks.

Newsletter :  MAHE Pro Vice Chancellor (Health Sciences) Dr Poornima Baliga released the MAC ID newsletter ‘Contagion’.

Sir Nicholas J White, professor of Tropical Medicine at Oxford and Thailand, delivered the keynote address
on ‘Malaria: The Past, Present and Future’.

He traced the history of malaria, evolution of drug resistance in malaria and hinted that malaria vaccines could potentially be valuable in low endemic areas to eliminate malaria.

Dr David Richard Bell from the US-based Global Health Expert, Seattle, spoke on the challenges in availability and use of point of care diagnostics, biomarkers for diseases severity and the importance of true costs of diagnostics
for the national programme. He also highlighted on
the methods available for detection of low-level malaria parasitemia in elimination settings.

Dr Ravi Vasanthapuram, professor of Neurovirology, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, highlighted the epidemiology of acute encephalitis syndrome, newer testing algorithms, and the need for early identification of treatable causes of encephalitis for improved outcomes.

Dr Sajeeth Kumar, medical superintendent and professor of Medicine, Kozhikode Medical College, spoke on the lessons learnt from the Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala.

G Arun Kumar, Manipal Institute of Virology (MIV) director, delivered a talk
on ‘Emerging Viral Hemorrhagic Diseases’ such as KFD, Ebola, Dengue haemorrhagic fever and Crimian
Congo Haemorrhagic fever (CCHF).

Nicholas P J Day, professor of Tropical Medicine at Oxford and Thailand, Dr Jesse Pappenberg Paediatric Infectious diseases specialist from McGill University, Canada, also spoke on the occasion.