{"id":3642,"date":"2017-04-07T11:04:04","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T10:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/?p=3642"},"modified":"2017-04-07T11:04:04","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T10:04:04","slug":"getting-innovative-diagnostic-and-treatment-tools-into-policy-and-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/getting-innovative-diagnostic-and-treatment-tools-into-policy-and-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting innovative diagnostic and treatment tools into policy and practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While some parts of the world are now deploying 4<sup>th<\/sup> generation healthcare technological including diagnostic and treatment tools, some are still struggling to progress to 2<sup>nd<\/sup> generation.\u00a0 The question is how do we get everybody to access the best diagnostic tools?\u00a0 There are many answers to this question but the main ones are funding, training and partnership between policy makers and innovators.\u00a0 Dr Wilber Sabiiti has recently given a series of talks and training in different African countries showcasing the advantages of the molecular bacterial load assay (MBLA) and TWENDE work on developing model for rapid uptake of health research innovations into policy and practice.<\/p>\n<p>Developed and optimised at University of St. Andrews, the MBLA is the first assay in the world of bacteriology to offer rapid molecular quantification of bacterial burden.\u00a0 Traditionally, bacterial load quantification has depended on grown on solid agar medium and counting the number of colonies.\u00a0 This approach works well if:\u00a0 the bacterial species rapidly grow on solid medium; 2) the entire species population grows on solid medium; and 3) the medium is effectively selective to inhibit other bacterial species from growth.\u00a0 The reverse is true with <em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis<\/em> (Mtb), which is a slow grower, proportion of its population doesn\u2019t grow on artificial growth media and often the sample decontamination techniques fall short of removing non-mycobacterial organisms.\u00a0 The MBLA solves these challe<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3643 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/med.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/28\/2017\/04\/Wilber-presents-at-Stellenbosch-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/>nges by offering a contamination-free rapid, sensitive and specific quantification of patient Mtb burden. \u00a0Like viral load monitoring of antiretroviral treatment in HIV infection, MBLA monitors the response to anti-tuberculosis treatment by measuring the decline in bacterial load of a patient during treatment follow-up.\u00a0 The results are available in as little as 4h from the time reaches the lab. Read more of Dr. Sabiiti\u2019s presentation to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sun.ac.za\/english\/faculty\/healthsciences\/biomedical_sciences\">department of Biomedical Sciences Stellenbosch University<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3644 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/med.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/28\/2017\/04\/Stellenbosch-MBLA-training-class-with-Dr.-Novel-Chegou-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/>The Stellenbosch\u2019s school of Biomedical sciences is leading research on host biomarkers of tuberculosis and working the Infection group at University of St. Andrews\u2019 school of Medicine studies will be conducted to optimise and integrate microbiological and host biomarkers of tuberculosis disease and treatment response.\u00a0 Dr. Sabiiti gave MBLA training to postgraduate students in the department, some whom will be instrumental in driving the research and implementation of MBLA at Stellenbosch University.<\/p>\n<p>Innovation is not complete until the products are accessed by society.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/infection.st-andrews.ac.uk\/twende-overview\/\">TWENDE<\/a> is working to create channels for rapid uptake of health research innovations into policy and practice in E. Africa.\u00a0 Innovative tools like MBLA need to be integrated into the tuberculosis control policy so that they can be assessed by the people who most need them.\u00a0 Dr. Sabiiti gave talks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nimr.or.tz\/research-centres\/mbeya-research-centre\/\">NIMR-Mbeya Medical Research Centre<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcri.ac.tz\/about\">Kilimanjar<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3645 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/med.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/28\/2017\/04\/Wilber-presenting-to-MMRC-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/>o Clinical Research Institute<\/a> aimed at increasing the awareness of TWENDE work to all staff members who aren\u2019t part of the TWENDE research team, full presentation can be accessed on the link.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>TWENDE aims at expanding to all East African Community (EAC) member states. To this end, Dr. Sabiiti visited the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rbc.gov.rw\/index.php?id=188\">Medical Research Centre<\/a> (MRC) team at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre to discuss opportunities for initiating research collaboration with the University of St. Andrews and the rest of the TWENDE partner institutions in the EAC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Wilber Sabiiti has recently given a series of talks and training in different African countries showcasing the advantages of the molecular bacterial load assay (MBLA) and TWENDE work on developing model for rapid uptake of health research innovations into policy and practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":3643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[409,608,702,746,1095,1130,1133],"class_list":["post-3642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorised","tag-dr-wilber-sabiiti","tag-infection-group","tag-mbla","tag-molecular-bacteral-load-assay","tag-tb","tag-tuberculosis","tag-twende"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 12:12:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}