Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: the impact of infections and nutrition on the health of pregnant women and infants

The level of mortality and disease among pregnant women and young children in Papua New Guinea is very high. Low birthweight and poor growth during early childhood are common and are major causes morbidity and mortality. Pregnant women and young children experience a high burden of infectious diseases (E.g. malaria, bacterial and viral infections), anemia, and other health problems. Poor maternal nutrition and infections (such as malaria, bacterial infections) interact to cause poor growth of babies and young children, as well as anemia in women and children. This project is part of our “Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies” program in Papua New Guinea in which we have studied pregnant women, infants, and young children, and women after pregnancy in detail. Depending on the student’s interest, this project will be tailored to focus on the application of a combination of established assays and/or new powerful metabolomics/proteomic approaches to identify nutritional deficiencies, infections and other causes of poor pregnancy outcomes, poor growth, and anemia. Identifying signatures of malnutrition and inflammation and major infections could allow the design of new interventions to achieve better outcomes for young children and women. All enquiries relating to this research project should be directed to Chrissie Collins – chrissie.collins@burnet.edu.au