The University of Sydney's $100,000 commitment towards research with the Public Health Foundation of India will allow leading public health researchers in Australia and India to work together on pressing health issues including antibiotic resistance and the rise of infectious diseases.

 

The new funding will see the 15-year relationship between the two institutions expand from training public health professionals to researching emerging health threats in both countries. The programme will now focus on four areas: disease surveillance, antimicrobial resistance, innovation (including vaccine development), and continued training of the next generation of health professionals.

 

Professor Antoine van Oijen, Associate Dean (Research) at the University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) President Sanjay Zodpey formalised the new partnership in New Delhi on 7 September. 

 

Researchers from the University’s Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, part of the Faculty of Medicine and Health, were also in India discussing how the two organisations can develop One Health initiatives, programmes that consider the health of humans, the environment and animals in unison.

 

“Our expertise on the use of antibiotics in animals, pathogen genomics, One Health surveillance and the development of novel vaccines to treat increasingly prevalent diseases like Japanese encephalitis are highly complementary with the depth of public health experience at the Public Health Foundation of India", said Prof Oijen.