Syndromic infections

在非洲和其他低收入国家，当身体非常不适的儿童被送到医院时，往往很难找出致病的原因。在这些环境中，疟疾和其他常见感染也会产生同样的症状。这些症状可能包括发烧或血液中血红蛋白水平低。通常不可能找出导致他们生病的确切原因。这是一个大问题，因为它使我们很难知道如何最好地治疗它们。在这个项目中，我们将设计并开展研究，找出治疗这些儿童的最佳方法。我们的目标是减少他们的死亡机会，并确保指导方针推荐最好的方法。我们还将设计和开展研究，找出管理由细菌引起的更普遍的严重感染的最佳方法。我们尤其希望减少抗菌素（药物）耐药性带来的威胁。我们将特别关注婴儿（不到30天）和儿童，以确定他们应该服用的抗生素剂量。儿童服用的抗生素剂量差别很大。这是因为儿童的剂量主要基于过去的实践，而不是证据。

When children who are very unwell arrive at hospitals in Africa and other low-income countries, it is often hard to work out what is causing the illness. Malaria and other common infections in these settings can give the same symptoms. These symptoms may include fever or low levels of haemoglobin in the blood. It is often impossible to find out exactly what is making them sick. This is a big problem, as it makes it hard to know how best to treat them. In this programme we will design and run studies to work out the best ways to treat these children. We aim to reduce their chance of dying and make sure that guidelines recommend the best approaches. We will also design and run studies to work out the best ways of managing serious infections caused by bacteria more generally. In particular we want to reduce the threat posed by antimicrobial (drug) resistance. We will particularly look at infants (less than 30 days old) and children to work out the antibiotic doses they should be getting. The antibiotic doses children get vary hugely. This is because doses for children are mostly based on past practice, rather than evidence.