Prominent speakers, both national and international, presented important information on infectious diseases at the third Manipal International Infectious Diseases Conference 2019 held here recently. Each one of them came up with several aspects of common diseases and some newer ones too.
A release issued here said 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’.
Inaugurating the conference, MAHE vice-chancellor H. Vinod Bhat said in the coming days, “one health” approach and surveillance should be the way forward for early detection of infectious disease outbreaks.
In his keynote address, Nicholas J. White, professor of Tropical Medicine at Oxford and Thailand, spoke on ‘Malaria: the past, present and future’. He traced the history of malaria, evolution of drug resistance and hinted that the vaccines could potentially be valuable in low endemic areas to eliminate malaria.
Ravi Vasanthapuram, professor of Neurovirology at 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.
Sajeeth Kumar, medical superintendent, Kozhikode Medical College, spoke on the ‘Lessons learnt from Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala’. G. Arun Kumar, director of Manipal Institute of Virology, gave a talk on emerging viral haemorrhagic diseases such as KFD, ebola, dengue haemorrhagic fever, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
Jesse Pappenberg, paediatric infectious diseases specialist from McGill University, spoke on advanced molecular diagnostics/POC tests in respiratory infections and emphasised the need to choose diagnostics wisely and the need for influenza vaccination.
An informative panel discussion on ‘Outbreak management: the road ahead’, was led by Kavitha Saravu, joint coordinator, MAC ID.
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