Foreword
Kevin G Kerr is Consultant Microbiologist and Director of Infection Prevention and Control for the Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust. He is Honorary Clinical Professor of Microbiology at the Hull York Medical School and Visiting Professor at the School of Engineering Design and Technology at the University of Bradford. He is an editor of the Journal of Hospital Infection and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Pathology. He is a member of the Royal College of Physicians Working Party on Healthcare-associated Infection. He chairs the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases’ Study Group on Food and Waterborne Infection. Professor Kerr’s research interests include the role of the built environment in nosocomial infection and the development of engineering-based solutions to the problem of healthcare-associated infection with current/recent projects funded, among others, by NHS Estates and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, as well as industrial partners.
A
lthough a relatively new journal, European Infectious Disease has already established an enviable reputation as a respected source of information and opinion on a wide range of topics concerning infectious diseases, medical microbiology and infection prevention and control and it is my great pleasure to write the foreword for this issue.
William H Stewart, when he was US Surgeon General, famously remarked that it was “time to close the book on infectious diseases”. Nearly forty years on, it is apparent that the optimism of the 1960s was misplaced. This issue highlights that the war against infection continues on all fronts and there are dispatches from the frontline of the therapeutic battlefield with micro-organisms, with particular emphasis on the management of fungal infections and the agents of viral hepatitis; pathogens for which there are still frustratingly few treatment options.
The dearth of genuinely new antimicrobials and the relentless erosion of the usefulness of existing agents through continued emergence and spread of resistance, as highlighted in the article by Lindsay Nicolle, provides a salient reminder of the adage that ‘prevention is better than cure’. This issue features several highly informative pieces on prevention of infection through vaccination, as well the control of infection in hospitals, including patients on the intensive care unit – a group which is especially vulnerable to nosocomial infection.
Another group vulnerable to infection is children and paediatric infectious diseases represent a strong theme in this issue, with a range of authoritative pieces on mycobacterial diseases, viral hepatitis, candidal infection and HIV.
Currently, we are witnessing the beginning of a potential revolution in the provision of services for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Technology, which, up until recently, was the province of the research laboratory or the reference centre, has been commercialised and is now beginning to find its way into the diagnostic laboratory. n
© TOUCH BRIEFINGS 2011
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