13 Sep 2010
Our Changing World - Meningococca survival
At the height of the recent epidemic in New Zealand in 2001 an average of one person died every two weeks from meningococcal disease. The bacteria that cause it are thought to be as temperamental as they are lethal - unable to survive for long outside the human host. New research by PhD student Claire Swaine is challenging this assumption and Ruth Beran goes to visit her in the lab at the Victoria University.