52 Attend 42nd Symposium | Senior scientist becomes life member of medical society | Young scientist receives award | Sauli attends measles detection workshop | IMR madang staff attend AIDS talk | Staff get training on DVBS | University of Technology staff visit PNGIMR | This quater in pictures | Media personnel attends film workshop in Fiji | IMR Rugby Union team receive new jerseys | A trip of a life time | 2007 42nd Medical symposium in pictures |Successful GIS training workshop

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Young scientist receives award

The 42nd Medical Symposium ended on Wednesday night with a cultural night dinner and the presentation of awards.

(l-r) gidtpr coordinator, dr peter zimmermen, and 2006 fogarty students: ms serah javati, ms annemarie laumaea and ms lisol luke.

Miss Lisol Luke, a young female medical scientist of New Ireland and Bougainville parentage, working at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research (PNGIMR), received the President’s prize, which was an award for the best research paper presented at the Medical Symposium.

Miss Luke’s presentation was on ‘Distribution of pulmonary tuberculosis and anti tuberculosis drug resistance in a hospital setting in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea.’

Her research was based on investigating TB drug resistance in the hospital attendees at the Modilon General hospital in Madang Province and the main objective of her research was to establish drug resistance profile for this clinical setting.

“In the process of our study, we found that drug resistance was present in new TB cases and the most common form of drug resistance was multiple drug resistance TB to the most potent TB drugs available in the country,” said Miss Luke.

Miss Luke said that this study implicates on the efficacy of TB control program in PNG and on the rising epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea.

Miss Luke got a lot of positive feed back from the medical professionals about her research and was encouraged to continue doing her research work.

The Director of the PNG Institute of Medical Research, Professor Peter Siba, congratulated Ms Luke on her achievement and said that he will always encourage and support young Papua New Guinean scientist to do research into the common infectious diseases in the country that affect the people of PNG.

Professor Siba also congratulated other young medical scientists working with the PNGIMR for their outstanding presentations at the medical symposium.

Other young medical scientist presenters were: Ms Annemarie Laumaea who presented on ‘Immunogenecity of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (Prevenar TM) in Papua New Guinean children: Preliminary results from the neonatal pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (NPCV) trial in the Asaro Valley, Eastern Highlands Province,’ and : Sarah Javati who presented on ‘The age-specific prevalence of antibodies to plasmodium vivax antigens, in Papua New Guinea.’

Other scientist and social scientist from PNGIMR also presented papers at the main symposium and the biomedical symposium, ranging from subjects of HIV/ AIDS, Women’s’ Health, Malaria, Pneumonia, TB and other diseases affecting the people of Papua New Guinea.