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Te Niwha has five Research Priority Areas, drawn from our Charter. These areas are part of ensuring our commitment to ensuring Aotearoa New Zealand's preparedness for ongoing and emerging infectious disease threats.
Testing of sewage for the presence of infectious disease, known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), is used to assess disease burden in communities without the need for individualised testing. It allows for cost-effective, non-invasive and unbiased disease screening of whole communities, and can be deployed in areas traditionally underserved by healthcare surveillance.
This project has strong potential to inform local and national preventative measures when integrated with other surveillance systems.
Vibrio infections present as gastroenteritis or tissue infections that can be mild or very serious. These bacteria live naturally in aquatic environments and people become infected from eating contaminated kaimoana (seafood) or coming into contact with contaminated water.
Collecting environmental samples such as bird faeces will help understand how and where avian influenza and other potentially devastating viruses could impact Aotearoa New Zealand as the highly infectious H5N1 spreads globally.