Tapfumanei Mashe

I am a One Health research scientist, working as a Deputy Coordinator for the integrated laboratory activities on antimicrobial resistance and Global ESBL Tricycle projects, in Zimbabwe. As a member of the Zimbabwe AMR R&D, and Surveillance TWG, I am involved in the implementation of the Zimbabwe AMR NAP and antimicrobial resistance research.

I applied to both the Working with Pathogen Genomes and Molecular Approaches to Clinical Microbiology courses, due to the renowned reputation of Wellcome Genome Campus Advanced Courses. I knew I would receive cutting edge training in molecular techniques and genomic data analysis skills. I was thrilled to be surrounded by highly skilled and knowledgeable trainers who are leaders in their respective fields. I also wanted to establish professional relationships that would enrich my scientific collaborations. All my expectations were met, and in many instances exceeded.

The courses I attended in 2018, changed both my work and personal life. I have been able to employ the bioinformatics skills and molecular techniques I learnt, with profound results.

I managed to analyse typhoid and cholera genomics data generated from outbreaks in Zimbabwe, and some of the information has been published in BMC Infectious diseases (Mashe et al., 2019).

The course helped me to write environmental surveillance of Salmonella Typhi grant application in collaboration with the Quadram Institute Biosciences – which was approved by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I have also worked with the Ministry of Health to apply the skills I acquired to understand the mechanism of resistance and phylogeny of a major cholera outbreak that happened between 2018 and 2019. The results of this work were accepted for publication by New England Journal of Medicine. Due to high resistance in Vibrio cholerae and Salmonella Typhi the results of the studies are contributing to work on the introduction of vaccination programs for cholera and typhoid in Zimbabwe.

Thanks to my experience with Wellcome Genome Campus Advanced Courses, I have also been able to share the results of the above work at various conferences, including: the Second Ministerial Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance (2019), Netherlands, 12th Meeting on Global Microbial Identifier (2019), Singapore and 11th International Conference on Typhoid and Invasive Salmonellosis (2019), Vietnam.