Past Webinar – 7 December 2022
ACCYPN Webinar
Wednesday 7 December 2022 – Strep A – one bugger of a bug!
ACCYPN invites you to join Dr Joshua Osowicki, Paediatric Infectious Diseases Physician, Infectious Diseases Unit, Department of General Medicine, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne for a webinar.
Members please use the registration link sent to you via email to access member rates.
Non-Members to access Member rates please click here and join as a member now and you will be emailed a link to register for the webinar at member rates.
Presentation: Strep A – one bugger of a bug!
Date: Wednesday 7 December 2022
Presenter: Dr Joshua Osowicki, Paediatric Infectious Diseases Physician, Infectious Diseases Unit, Department of General Medicine, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
Time: 12:30 pm NSW / VIC / ACT (AEDT) | 12.00pm SA (ACDT) | 11:30 am QLD (AEST) | 11:00am NT (ACST) 9.30am WA (ACST) (1 CPD Hour) (1/2 hour presentation with 15 minutes Q&A and 15 minutes open discussion)
Attendance: Live Webinar
Cost: Members (Free), Non Members $25.00
Registration: Online Registration
Non-Members to access Member rates please click here and join as a member now and you will be emailed a link to register for the webinar at member rates.
Disclaimer: The webinar will be recorded. As this webinar includes Q&A and open discussion, anyone who participates or has their video turned on may be included in the recording.
Title: Strep A – one bugger of a bug!
Abstract
While the global burden of diseases due to Strep A bacteria (Group A Streptococcus pyogenes) hits the very young, very old, and very poor hardest, no person or place is completely safe from Strep A. The impact of Strep A diseases, from pharyngitis to flesh-eating disease, is felt everywhere around the world, at all ages, and strikes at every level of healthcare from primary to intensive care.
If you work in the community, you might be most aware of Strep A as the cause of ‘strep throat’, affecting more than 600 million people every year, and impetigo or ‘school sores’ that affect 100s of millions of children every year. It’s also a leading cause of cellulitis, especially in seniors. If you work in northern Australia, you’ll know Strep A as the cause of acute rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease, and post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis, post-infectious conditions that damage the heart and kidneys. And anyone who has worked in critical care will know the horror of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome and other invasive Strep A diseases like necrotising fasciitis.
In Australia, Strep A infections and post-infectious problems severely affect the health and wellbeing of Indigenous communities, which are hit especially hard by rheumatic heart disease, with the highest rates in the world. Although the story of Strep A vaccine development is a long and frustrating one, Josh has some exciting news about things that are happening to hopefully help put the scourge of Strep A behind us!
Presenter BIO:
Dr Joshua Osowicki, MBBS BMedSci PhD FRACP
Clinician-Scientist Fellow, Melbourne Children’s Campus
Postdoctoral researcher – Tropical Diseases Research Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Paediatric Infectious Diseases Physician, Infectious Diseases Unit, Department of General Medicine, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
Infectious Diseases Unit, Department of General Medicine, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
Senior lecturer (honorary), Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Josh is a Paediatric Infectious Diseases physician, trained in Melbourne and Darwin in Australia, and Vancouver in Canada. He works clinically at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne and completed his PhD in the Tropical Diseases research group at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, establishing the world’s only Streptococcus pyogenes (aka group A Streptococcus, GAS, Strep A) pharyngitis human challenge model in healthy adults, based in Melbourne. Plans for vaccine evaluation using the model are an important part of a growing global push to accelerate GAS vaccine development, including WHO-supported efforts leading to establishment of a global Strep A VAccine Consortium (SAVAC) with funding from the Wellcome Trust, and a major investment by the Australian federal government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) in a new Australian Strep A Vaccine Initiative (ASAVI).
