BIP : The Institut Pasteur Newsletter, January 19, 2018

The French National Reference Center (CNR) for Salmonella based at the Institut Pasteur in Paris is in charge of microbiological surveillance of cases of human salmonella infection. In late November 2017, it was this CNR that alerted the authorities to the excessive number of salmonellosis cases in infants, and thus engaged the fight against the outbreak of salmonella infections linked to powdered baby milk – a story that has hit the headlines in recent weeks.

As part of the ongoing development of its online training, the Institut Pasteur has set up a MOOC on malaria, a disease which remains a major public health threat and claims more than 400,000 lives each year. Although the widespread use of currently available malaria control measures has led to a considerable reduction in the spread of the disease over the past decade, the elimination of malaria in highly endemic regions remains a distant prospect.

Leptospirosis is a re-emerging zoonosis that affects over one million people and is responsible for nearly 60,000 deaths each year worldwide. This disease transmitted to humans via freshwater contaminated with bacteria of the genus Leptospira has a record incidence in Oceania.