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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

CP3.1: Tropical Health 10 min talks sponsored by QIMR Berghofer, Centre for Tropical Health & Emerging Diseases

Time:

Tuesday, 30/June/2026:

11:35am - 11:55am

Session Chair: Darren Gray, QIMR Berghofer
Session Chair: Chika Zumuk, Queensland Institute of Medical Research

Location: Lecture Theatre 3

Boulevard Room 1

Presentations

Epidemiology of soil-transmitted helminth infections in urban slum and tea garden communities in Northeastern Bangladesh

Mandira Mukutmoni¹, Tilak Chandra Nath², Adam Bartlett¹, Susana Vaz Nery¹

¹Global Health Program, Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; ²Department of Parasitology, Sylhet Agricultural University, Bangladesh

Soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections remain prevalent in northeastern Bangladesh despite the national school-based deworming programme implemented since 2008. This study reports STH epidemiology in underprivileged communities of Sylhet and Moulvibazar districts.

A total of 772 stool samples were collected from 16 urban slum and tea garden communities between May and October 2025 and analysed using sodium nitrate flotation, Kato-Katz, and Baermann techniques. Descriptive statistics estimated prevalence, adjusted for clustering, with 95% confidence intervals.

Based on sodium-nitrate-flotation, overall STH prevalence was 35.1% (271/772; 95% CI 26.2-45.2), with Ascaris lumbricoides predominating at 31.1% (240/772; 21.8-42.2), followed by hookworm (38/772; 4.9%, 2.6-9.1) and Trichuris trichiura (34/772; 4.4%, 2.0-9.5). All infections were of light to moderate intensity. STH prevalence ranged from 12.5% to 70.9% across communities, with similar levels in tea garden (57/162; 35.2%) and slum settings (214/610; 35.1%). Using Kato-Katz, overall prevalence was 28.4% (219/772; 20.1-38.4), with A. lumbricoides predominant (193/772; 25.0%, 16.5-36.1) followed by T. trichiura (26/772; 3.4%, 1.3-8.2) and hookworm (19/772; 2.5%, 1.4-4.4). SNF was more sensitive than Kato-Katz, with concordance analysis planned. Strongyloides spp. prevalence by Baermann was lower than expected (0.4%; 3/772; 0.1-1.6).

These findings highlight persistent transmission and community-level variation, supporting community-based control strategies targeted to high-risk areas.

Development and field-testing of point-of-care diagnostics for schistosomiasis elimination in the Philippines

Emmanuel John Tabilin^1,2, Eleonor Avenido-Cervantes³, Mary Lorraine Mationg⁴, Darren Gray⁴, Marianette Inobaya³, Mario Jiz⁴, Hong You⁵, Catherine Gordon^1,2, Pengfei Cai¹

¹Applied Tropical and Molecular Parasitology, QIMR Berghofer, Australia; ²Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Australia; ³Research Institute of Tropical Medicine, Muntinlupa City, Philippines; ⁴Global Health and Tropical Medicine, QIMR Berghofer, Australia; ⁵Molecular Helminthology, QIMR Berghofer, Australia

Schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma japonicum remains highly prevalent in the Philippines despite decades of preventive chemotherapy, partly due to the absence of accurate, field‑deployable diagnostics. We recently developed two semi–point‑of‑care diagnostics (POCs): (1) an equipment‑free cotton‑syringe stool DNA extraction device paired with portable quantitative PCR, and (2) a latex microsphere‑based lateral flow immunoassay detecting anti‑SjSAP4 antibodies in serum. Laboratory validation using infected human samples showed diagnostic performance comparable to established methods—87.7%/92.1% sensitivity/specificity for the cotton‑syringe system relative to Kato‑Katz (KK) and commercial stool qPCR, and 80.6%/98.0% for the anti‑SjSAP4 LFIA compared with KK. To evaluate field applicability, both POCs were deployed in six endemic Philippine villages, where community health workers were trained to perform the tests on residents (n=250 per village). Acceptability was assessed through questionnaires and focus group discussions. Preliminary findings highlight key challenges, including reluctance among health workers to handle stool samples and workflow bottlenecks during stool homogenization in the cotton‑syringe method. Addressing these operational pain points will be essential for improving uptake and ensuring that these POCs can support more accurate, community‑level schistosomiasis surveillance and monitoring.