Aug 5, 2020
Researcher Rebecca Traub
discusses the most prevalent and damaging
types of parasites in Australia and Southeast Asia.
She describes
Rebecca Traub is a professor in
veterinary parasitology at the University of Melbourne. She's had a
prolific career, with over 130 publications and several book
chapters on the veterinary parasitology impact factors in Australia
and Southeast Asia. Her work expands beyond cats and dogs and
includes any animal impacted by parasites and their life cycles,
including human mammals and resulting
public health issues.
She explains that parasites use a number of different hosts to stay
alive. Therefore, her work can involve wildlife and conservation
medicine. As an example, she recounts some work she did to help
repopulate an island with the eastern barred bandicoot
after an infestation by parasites carried by feral dogs hurt their
population.
The majority of her work now is
with zoonoses, or parasites transmitted between animals and humans
through various means, but her main focus is on soil-transmitted
helminths and tick-borne and flea-borne parasites. She describes
one of the most dangerous parasites in the world, a soil-borne
parasite called Ancylostoma ceylanicum, which is dropped in the soil from dog
feces.
It's the second most common hookworm in Australia and Southeast
Asia and therefore has a tremendous veterinary parasitology impact
factor. She explains why it is still a massive problem despite a
large-scale effort on WHO's part to decrease its morbidity. She
goes into detail about how these worms harm the human body and
possible next steps to decrease its negative impact.
For more, see her university
website at
pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/individuals/professor-rebecca-traub
and search her name in Google
Scholar.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK