Combating Antibiotic Resistance in Asia and Africa

The President of Phages for Global Health, Dr Tobi Nagel, is conducting a Fulbright Global Scholar project in which she is gathering details about how phages are currently being regulated in high-income countries and sharing that information with regulatory leaders in low- and middle-income countries. The overall goal is to help accelerate the clarification of phage regulatory systems in Africa and Asia, where roughly 90% of the worldwide deaths from antibiotic resistance are expected to occur — and where phages are needed most!

The Fulbright award is supporting Tobi's work in 3 different countries — Kenya, Malaysia and Uganda — for 2 months each. Tobi recently completed the first segment, which was in Kenya, and she and her in-country collaborators made significant progress in paving the way for the initiation of phage therapy in Kenya. Her official Kenyan host, Dr Lillian Musila, and her team at the Kenya Medical Research Institute arranged for meetings not only with the Kenyan regulatory agency, but also with national leaders working in the agriculture, fisheries and veterinary fields. They also arranged for Tobi to lecture at universities, research institutes and hospitals throughout Kenya — spreading interest in excitement about the potential of phages.

At the culmination of her time there, Tobi's hosts organized a gathering of phage researchers from throughout Kenya, as shown in the photo here. Most of the attendees either participated in previous phage workshops delivered by Phages for Global Health or were trained by participants of those workshops!