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Antimicrobial resistance: prepared for the silent pandemic?

The LSHTM-Charité Global Health Lecture Series brings together leading scientists from the UK, Germany and further afield to present cutting-edge research on pressing global health issues and to discuss the implications of their work for policy and practice.

Photo credit: Canva - Medical illustration of drug-resistance bacteria, courtesy of the public health image library, CDC
Photo credit: Canva - Medical illustration of drug-resistance bacteria, courtesy of the public health image library, CDC

This ninth event of the LSHTM-Charité Global Health Lecture series will focus on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), exploring the current challenges and opportunities for AMR surveillance and prevention and how to address these through research and policy.

Professor Lothar H. Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, and Professor Dame Sally Davies, UK Special Envoy on AMR, will discuss the use of surveillance tools to track AMR, provide insights on the impact and opportunities emerging for antimicrobial resistance from the COVID-19 pandemic and explore the role of global actors and initiatives to address AMR in research and policy.  

Dr Johanna Hanefeld, Head of the LSHTM office in Berlin and Associate Professor in Health Policy and Systems Research at LSHTM, will chair and moderate the event. Prior to this discussion, Professor Colm Leonard, Consultant Clinical Advisor for the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), will introduce the UK “Netflix”-style subscription model to incentivise the creation of new antibiotics. 

Speakers

Speakers photos from left to right: Prof Lothar Wieler, Prof Dame Sally Davies, Dr Johanna Hanefeld, Prof Colm Leonard
Professor Lothar H. Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin

Professor Lothar H. Wieler is president of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, the national Public Health Institute in Germany. His research focuses on zoonotic diseases in a One health concept, i.e. infections that are passed between animals and humans, and account for many of the newly (re-)emerging infectious diseases. A particular research interest of Professor Wieler is the molecular mechanisms, which enable bacterial zoonotic pathogens such as e. coli and s. aureus to infect different hosts and develop resistance to antibiotics.  

Wieler is co-founder of the German national research platform on zoonoses and deputy spokesperson for the research consortium InfectControl 2020, which pursues intersectoral approaches to preventing and treating infections from a One Health perspective. Professor Wieler is also a member of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Infectious Hazards of the World Health Organization (WHO), the scientific advisory board of the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness and the WHO Europe Advisory Committee on Health Research.  

Since 2010, he is also an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences, where he also holds the position of a senator. In 2020 he was nominated to the member board of the One Health Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Organisation for Animal Health and WHO.  

In 2021 Wieler has been awarded two honorary Doctors of Veterinary Medicine (Dr. med. vet. h.c. mult.), one by the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Zurich and one by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. He was also named an AVES Honorary Diplomate by the American Veterinary Epidemiology Society in 2021. As an honorary professor with teaching responsibility, he continues to be associated with the Institute of Microbiology and Epizootics at the Department of Veterinary Medicine at Freie Universität Berlin. 

Professor Dame Sally Davies, UK Special Envoy on AMR 

Dame Sally Davies was appointed as the UK Government’s Special Envoy on AMR in 2019. She is also the 40th Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University. 

Dame Sally was the Chief Medical Officer for England and Senior Medical Advisor to the UK Government from 2011-2019. She is a leading figure in global health, having served as a member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Executive Board 2014-2016, and as co-convener of the United Nations Inter-Agency Co-ordination Group (IACG) on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), reporting in 2019. In November 2020, Dame Sally was announced as a member of the new UN Global Leaders Group on AMR, serving alongside Heads of State, Ministers and prominent figures from around the world to advocate for action on AMR.

In the 2020 New Year Honours, Dame Sally became the second woman (and the first outside the Royal family) to be appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) for services to public health and research, having received her DBE in 2009. 

Dr Johanna Hanefeld, Head of the LSHTM office in Berlin and Associate Professor in Health Policy and Systems Research at LSHTM

Johanna Hanefeld is an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Systems at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Lead of its Berlin office. Her research has included behavioural interventions targeted at changing provider behaviour relating to antibiotics. She is also the Head of the Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch-Institute in Berlin. 

Professor Colm Leonard, Consultant Clinical Advisor for the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE

Professor Colm Leonard is a Consultant Thoracic Physician at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust since October 2000, and an honorary professor of respiratory medicine at the Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, and since 2008 has been on part-time (currently 50%) secondment to the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE as consultant clinical adviser.  

Professor Leonard went to Medical School at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, graduating in 1991. In 1994 Professor Leonard commenced his respiratory specialty training and in 1995 was awarded a British Council Research Fellowship grant to carry out work on Asthma Immunology looking at T cell responses to allergen in vitro supervised from the Royal Free, winning an ERS Young Investigator award and an ACCP Young Investigator award for this work. In 1997 Professor Leonard commenced a three-year fellowship in Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center, California. During this time Professor Leonard subspecialised in interstitial lung disease (ILD) and lung transplantation. Professor Leonard joined the Stanford faculty after his fellowship but relocated to Manchester in October 2000 to take up the post of Consultant Thoracic Physician and medical lead for lung transplantation and ILD.  

Professor Leonard has been involved in basic science research, animal model work, clinical trials and his horizon scanning work with NICE is across all specialties. Since 2016, Professor Leonard has been clinical lead for the UK project on novel evaluation & delinked reimbursement of antimicrobials, a joint project between NICE, NHS England & Improvement and Department of Health and Social Care with the aim of incentivising the antimicrobial pipeline. 

The event will take place in a hybrid format. A small audience (invite-only) will attend the event at the British Embassy Berlin while the general public will be able to join the event remotely via Zoom. 

Programme

  • Welcome: Greeting from the British Embassy Berlin
  • Presentation: Introductory presentation on the UK "Netflix model" by Professor Colm Leonard, NICE 
  • Speakers: Conversation between Professor Lothar Wieler and Professor Dame Sally Davies 
  • Discussion: Q&A with audience

Please note that this session will take place at 18.20 CEST/17.20 BST.

The series is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This event in particular is additionally supported by the British Embassy Berlin.

Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Bill and Melinda Gates Foudation and British Embassy Berlin logos

Admission

Admission
Follow webinar link. Free and open to all. No registration required.

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