Congratulations to Danièle Gusland, MD, and Mackenzie Carlson on their Clinical Research Awards from the UW-Madison Global Health Institute!
Danièle Gusland, MD (Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellow), under the mentorship of James Conway, MD, and Dawd Siraj, MD (Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases), received $5,000 for her project, “Etiology and Antimicrobial Resistance Patterns of Neonatal Sepsis in Jimma, Ethiopia”. With this funding, Dr. Gusland proposes to develop a profile of causative organisms in neonatal serious bacterial infections and local antimicrobial resistance (AMR) patterns associated with infants treated at Jimma University Hospital, the primary referral hospital for southwest Ethiopia. With 4.5 million deaths attributable to AMR in Africa every year, the need for effective antimicrobial stewardship is urgent. An understanding of both bacterial epidemiology of infection and antimicrobial resistance patterns will ultimately further efforts to develop antimicrobial stewardship programs.
Mackenzie Carlson (2nd year medical student), under the mentorship of Ryan McAdams, MD, received $3,462 for her project, “Investigating the prevalence and practices of herbal medicine use in antenatal care in Mukono District, Uganda”. This proposal aims to describe herbal medicine practices in pregnant women seeking antenatal care in the Mukono District of Uganda. Prenatal herbal or traditional medicine use is common and plays a key role for pregnant women in low income countries. In African countries, up to 87% of women use herbal medicine as a part of their antenatal care. Despite widespread use, potential maternal and fetal side effects of herbal medicine remain understudied. The goals of this project are to gain a deeper understanding of how culture and tradition in medicine are being used present day to develop a system to evaluate these practices so that other districts and countries can evaluate their own health care.