Our stories

The fungi are a vast and distinctive kingdom of organisms that make up a significant component of most land ecosystems, intimately linked with bacteria, plants, and animals. Fungi cannot make their own food, so they live on or within their food, be that dead wood or...

One thing is clearer than ever:  the wellbeing of animals, humans and the environment is inseparable and, on a global scale, no issue represents this complex relationship better than the rise of antimicrobial resistance. The medical discovery that revolutionised our...

“Only clean water and antibiotics have had an impact on childhood death and disease that is equal to that of vaccines” -  World Health Organization (WHO). In the 20th century, when most of you reading this were born, nearly 1.7 billion people died from infectious...

Chlamydia is not a very sexy topic… it should be though, because it’s caught by having sex. It’s surprising how many young people don’t know how common chlamydia is. It’s easy to treat but it’s so much easier to prevent by using condoms when having oral, anal, or...

My name is Nick Pattison and I would like to share with you a citizen science investigation that I was involved in with my previous school Rongomai Primary, called the Healthy Homes Project. The project was created out of conversations between  myself and other...

Infectious diseases are far from defeated. They pose a unique health threat because they are caused by living micro-organisms. This biological fact has two important consequences: firstly it means that these micro-organisms are constantly evolving to exploit new...

In another life I used to sit on teams that developed something called ‘clinical guidance’. We would draw together published evidence and make recommendations on what best practice should look like. I sat on one such group for rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever (RF) is...

Wash your hands all you want.  Don’t touch things. Clean your cuts and grazes. Be careful all you can… but it won’t make any difference. An open wound will grow; it will cause rashes on your body and your skin to blister and weep. Once it’s in your blood stream, it...