• Question: How has your work helped so far?

    Asked by lucylu1805 to Nicola, Laura, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 11 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by hairybeast169, lynseyrumney, carterlad.
    • Photo: Nicola Wardrop

      Nicola Wardrop answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I have done quite a lot of work in Uganda with the ministry of health, and also a large disease control project. We have been working together to try and control a disease called sleeping sickness – it can infect both cows and people, and it will kill people if they are not treated. It’s been spreading in Uganda to new areas, which is causing a lot of problems and worry in the country.

      I have helped a lot by providing maps of the spatial distribution of the disease – showing which areas have had people infected in different years, and how this is changing over time. I have also shown that some of this spread is because of people selling and moving infected cows. If the cow has the parasite, and it is moved into an area where the disease doesn’t exist, then it can start spreading in that area and infect more cows and people. All this information has helped the government and the control project to alter their plans to make sure their control methods will be as effective as possible.

    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I’m very early in my research, I haven’t been a scientist for that long, but so far my work has helped by giving people a new tool that they have used to find out lots about ancient mammals from their brains. I also showed that an important method that people were using to find out about how extinction happened didn’t really work so now people (including me) are coming up with lots of new methods that work better and they’re learning more about extinction. I hope that my work will help a lot more in the future!

    • Photo: Sandra Phinbow

      Sandra Phinbow answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      The work I have done or that cervical screening has done have quite literally saved the lives of millions of women all over the world.

      Pathology as a whole medical discipline, does that, we are there to diagnose people’s illnesses and diseases so that they can get the right treatment and get better.

      And I know that what I do and what our dept does helps real people every day of the year.

Comments