Background and problems

One of the major health problems in developing countries is represented by diarrhoeal diseases. Up to 70% of all diarrhoea cases in children under the age of 5 years is of foodborne origin.
Overall about 1.3 billion diarrhoea disease episodes are estimated to occur annually in children under the age of 5 and, of these, over 3 million die.
Foodborne pathogens Salmonella, Shigella, Escherichia coli, Campylobacter, Yersinia and Vibrio are regarded by WHO as the predominant causes of illness in many parts of the world.
In Asia , typhoid fever is still a common illness among children and adults that live in areas of high population density. In addition, enteric salmonellosis and gastroenteritis occur frequently in these countries and, among the main pathogenic agents responsible for enteritis, a number of Salmonella enterica serovars are commonly isolated from faeces and from blood in clinical laboratories.
Due to the HIV epidemics, the severity of Salmonella infection, i.e. septicaemic infection, is likely to increase.
A number of infections that are acquired through the gastrointestinal tract characteristically occur in epidemic form - i.e. cholera and enteric fever. For these reason it is extremely important to be prepared in order to identify the agent responsible for the disease and to monitor and control its epidemic diffusion.
The logical approach for the control of enteric diseases is to improve microbiological diagnosis as a tool for both treatment and their prevention.
The understanding of the epidemiology of the diseases can have a great impact on public health.
Modern techniques capable of tracking the epidemic episodes are often used in research facilities but personnel in public health laboratories may not be aware of them. In order to maximise the impact of scientific research on public health it is important for capacity building to occur in the front line laboratories so that relevant research can be carried out. It is also important for the results of that research to be communicated nationally and internationally. Many excellent scientific research results are not published because of a lack of training in writing for publication. Training in country, open learning and access to a reliable source of advice can be really important to the entire process of research and the translation of research into public health practice.

The  cooperative group of researchers mainly from the Mediterranean area and Indian subcontinent  focused on the control of Salmonella infections through relevant research.

The present goal is to obtain funding to create a research network and a collection of epidemic Salmonella strains to be used for the definition of their antibiotic resistance, pathogenicity, and epidemic potential.
In the future, the research cooperation could be extended to other enteric pathogens.

General objectives

To maximise the potential for infectious disease research in regions of the world where the disease burden is highest and so empower scientists and public health workers in developing countries by:

Training of personnel in the field of microbiology;
Improving Open learning web site on enteric pathogens;
Promoting collaboration among members of the network;
Email network;
Annual network meeting;
Occasional focused in-country workshops;
Collection of statistical data for epidemiological and environmental control;
Encouraging publication of findings in open access journals.
Research agenda.
Tracking of epidemic episodes by using molecular typing methods to establish:
Possible sources and routes of transmission;
Use the epidemiology data to compare possible relationships between Salmonellosis in animals and man;
Fingerprinting of Salmonella isolates included in the collection;
Determination of the antibiotic resistance profiles to guide therapy empirically.

How to join the group

Who wants to join the group should send a cv with scientific interest and main publications to Salvatore Rubino Rubino@uniss.it or John Waine  jw5@sanger.ac.uk