Reducing the global burden of melioidosis

Direk is the head of the microbiology department at the Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit, Bangkok. He recently developed the first guidelines for the prevention of melioidosis, an infectious disease caused by an environmental bacterium called Burkholderia pseudomallei. During this Fellowship, he aims to undertake a clinical trial to evaluate whether these guidelines can reduce the incidence of melioidosis in north-east Thailand, and whether they are sufficiently cost-effective if implemented as national health policy. Direk will also identify countries where melioidosis might be present but under-recognised, and he will predict whether implementation of the preventive guidelines will be cost-effective in those areas.

This grant was awarded under the scheme's previous name of Intermediate Fellowships in Public Health and Tropical Medicine.