One Health Webinar

To mark One Health Awareness Month, ISAC is hosting a session featuring new research from the "One Health" Special Issue in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, an ISAC journal.

This 60-minute session will highlight how the One Health approach is essential in combating Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) across human, animal, and environmental health.

Key topics include:

* AMR in clinical and veterinary contexts
* Environmental transmission pathways
* Integrated surveillance and management strategies

Moderated by:

Sabiha Essack (School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)
Reema Singh (IJAA Associate Editor, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada)

PROGRAMME

• Introduction Prof. Sabiha Essack
• Presentation 1 Prof. Geoff Coombs - Antimicrobial resistance among clinically significant bacteria in wildlife: An overlooked one health concern
• Presentation 2 Dr Reema Singh - Bridging Sectors to Combat AMR: Editorial Insights from the One Health Virtual Special Issue
• Presentation 3 Mr Ziming Wu –Unravelling AMR dynamics in the rumenofaecobiome: insights, challenges and implications for One Health
• Panel Discussion All (including Dr Linda Oyama and Prof. Yonghong Xiao)

Available on-demand throughout World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW).

SPEAKER BIOS

Dr Reema Singh is a Bioinformatician and Data Manager at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada. Dr Singh works on large-scale genomic and transcriptomic datasets to revolutionize the understanding of various human and animal pathogens. Dr Singh has generated a database “Dlact” which consists of 2020 ß-lactamases from 457 bacterial strains which were further classified using graph-based clustering of best-bidirectional hits to identify the group-specific signature of ß-lactamases. Dr Singh has also developed a computational pipeline, called Gen2Epi, to assemble short-reads into full genomes and automatically assign molecular epidemiological and AMR information to the assembled genomes.

Prof. Yonghong Xiao, MD, PhD, is a Professor and Principal Investigator, currently serving as Vice-Director of the State Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases at the First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University. He also served as Guest Editor for the One Health Special Issue in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (IJAA).

Prof. Geoffrey Coombs is the Chair of Public Health at Murdoch University in Western Australia. His areas of research are: The molecular evolution of Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecium; Molecular epidemiology of Neisseria gonorrhoeae; Antimicrobial resistance surveillance. He has co-authored over 270 peer-reviewed scientific papers resulting in 13,700 citations. With an h-index of 57, in 2024 he was ranked by ScholarGPS in the top 0.5% of all scholars worldwide.
Professor Coombs is the Past-President for the Australian Society for Antimicrobials, Chair for the Australian Group for Antimicrobial Resistance, and Principal Examiner for the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Faculty of Science: Microbiology.

Ziming Wu is a third year PhD student supervised by Dr Linda Oyama and Prof. Sharon Huws at the School of Biological Sciences, QUB. His research focuses on how the AMR from unculturable ruminal anaerobes impact ruminants and One Health. Also, he is trying to standardise the antimicrobial susceptibility test for understudied ruminal anaerobes.
Ziming got his Master degree of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at QUB, 2022 and his bachelor’s degree of biomedical engineering in China, 2021. Ziming hopes to contribute to AMR research within the One Health framework.

Prof. Sabiha Essack is the South African Research Chair in Antibiotic Resistance and One Health and Professor in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban South Africa. She is the co-lead of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform Action Group on “Stewardship across the Lifecycle of Antimicrobials: a One Health Approach” and member of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for AMR. Sabiha serves as the Senior Implementation Research Advisor to the International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions, member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council for AMR, member of the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) Advisory Board, and member of the Fleming Fund Expert Advisory Group.

Dr Linda Oyama is a microbiologist and senior lecturer at the School of Biological Sciences and Institute for Global Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), with a First-class Microbiology degree and a PhD in Biological Sciences.
Linda’s research interests centre on understanding antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in microbiomes from a One Health perspective through surveillance and epidemiological studies using meta-omics approaches. She aims to tackle AMR through the discovery and development of novel treatment options for various clinical and veterinary multidrug resistant (MDR) infections.
As both a researcher and mentor, Linda is passionate about creating a supportive environment for early-career researchers (ECRs) while leading ambitious interdisciplinary projects that drive practical AMR solutions. She also coordinates the UKRI-funded Futures AMR Network, which connects ECRs with researchers, policymakers, and industry partners and empowers them to build collective capacity in tackling antimicrobial resistance. Through her work, she advocates for responsible antimicrobial use, evidence-based policy, and a more connected One Health approach to global health challenges. She is a pioneer and executive group member of the UK Young Academy.