The Guardian: Tackling antibiotic-resistant bacteria through collaborative networking
Hosam Zowawi, microbiologist and scientific entrepreneur

“…In 2011, the World Health Organization dedicated World Health Day to antibiotic-resistance and produced a policy package to combat antimicrobial resistance. Proposed measures included increasing surveillance and laboratory capacity, regulating and promoting the rational use of medicines, enhancing infection prevention and control, and fostering innovation and research & development for new tools. As a medical research team at the Centre for Clinical Research in the University of Queensland, and at the King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science, we have followed WHO’s lead and started taking action accordingly. … Our project started by successfully establishing the first collaborative network of hospitals in the Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) to share data and samples of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. … The beauty of our campaign is that it has a local perspective. The data and case studies all come from our research in the Gulf countries. This helps people really identify with the issues” (10/21).