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ASTMH Conference Highlights

1:03:53 recording · AUTO · 4 speakers

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Brief overview

A tropical medicine career built across Germany, Scotland, Johannesburg and Sierra Leone, shaped by drug resistance and outbreaks.

  1. Vaccines only add to working malaria controlGrobisch says they make no difference where nets, prompt diagnosis and ACT are not implemented properly.
  2. Drug-resistant TB outran the guidelines in 2005After Tugela Ferry there were no MDR/XDR-TB treatment guidelines and no novel drugs on the horizon.
  3. Research units belong inside the hospitalUnlike most African centres, Masanga's research unit was built intertwined with clinical services, so he now sits on the hospital board.
Executive Summary AI
  • Vincent Racaniello records TWiP episode 269 live from the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in Toronto with Daniel Griffin and Christina Naula, and their guest Martin Grobisch, Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Amsterdam.0:28
  • Grobisch traces his start to the early 80s, when as a conscientious objector he served 18 months in a German accident and emergency department instead of the military, enjoyed it, and went on to medical school in Gießen and Bonn, a house job in Ayr in Scotland, infectious diseases training at the Charité and a Masters at the London School under David Warhol.12:36
  • An advertisement in the Lancet took him to the University of the Witwatersrand as the country's first chair of infectious diseases from 2005 for five years, in hospitals where 1,500 internal medicine beds at Chris Hani Baragwanath were all HIV-TB co-infected, and after the Tugela Ferry outbreak killed 52 or 53 patients in about two weeks he was told to bring MDR and XDR-TB under control with no gu23:50
  • Since the 2015 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone he has built the Masanga Medical Research Center on the premises of the former Masanga Leprosy Hospital, deliberately intertwined with a 120-bed clinical service, and his group's MAPHESTU fever study admitted about 900 patients in a year, 760 eligible, with almost 40% of admissions malaria and ulcer patients making up 20% of the hospital population.33:54
  • On malaria vaccines he argues they are an important adjuvant tool for the end game but useless where nets, prompt diagnosis and artemisinin combination therapy are not already in place, and he judges that COVID hit Africa less hard than feared for reasons still poorly understood.50:00
Key Quote
“You know, this is not where you go for the big bucks and the fame.”
— Daniel Griffin4:00
Key Quote
“I really enjoyed it and it changed my path in life.”
— Martin Grobisch16:37
Key Quote
“It's just that a whole country grinds to a halt and there is basically no healthcare available any longer.”
— Martin Grobisch36:01