Blog
Entering Quarantine in Australia
July 17th, 2020Dr Deb Mills I travelled from Dunedin NZ to Brisbane on 10th July 2020. At that time there were no reported cases of community transmission of the new coronavirus in New Zealand so I considered I was more likely to get infected on the flight than bring the disease into Australia. I did not know how […]
Whooping cough vaccination of baby’s visitors
June 21st, 2020Whooping cough (a.k.a. pertussis) is a dangerous disease that can kill newborn babies – even in civilised countries like Australia. In the womb, mothers give babies antibodies to many diseases e.g. measles – but not to whooping cough. Furthermore, whooping cough vaccination cannot be given to babies until 6-8 weeks of age. The vaccine just does not work very well […]
International Travel Recovery?
May 15th, 2020We love to travel but WHEN can we go? Aside from everything else, this COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a big spanner in many travel plans. How long until we have an International Travel Recovery? When can we go? It is likely to take ‘a wee while’ as my Scottish grandma used to say. Of course, it will […]
Clinic update 30/4/20
April 30th, 2020Dear Readers, As we all know too well, the wretched little virus, COVID-19 has drastically changed our normal lives over the last few months: Locked down at home to various degrees, flights grounded, dreadful stories coming from all over the planet of unimaginable suffering and deaths. Such a lot of tragedy. My heart goes out to those […]
Why is COVID-19 such a big deal? Two reasons
March 11th, 2020This is not about whether you will get sick and die from COVID-19. Most people will not. This is about two things – one that is about you and the other that is about helping those less fortunate than you in the society that we all share and benefit from. We need to protect the […]
COVID19 Coronavirus
January 21st, 2020Update 17th Feb 2020 The situation continues to evolve. Almost all cases of COVID19 are in China so, unless it is urgent, don’t go to China for the moment – the persons in China have a lot going on, and probably don’t need visitors right now anyway. There is no risk in Australia. There are […]
Rabies Vaccine Research Project BORS
January 17th, 2020Update 21-4-21 We are thrilled to report we have now published this research. Mills DJ, Lau CL, Mills C, Furuya-Kanamori L. Efficacy of one-dose intramuscular rabies vaccine as pre-exposure prophylaxis in travellers. Journal of Travel Medicine. 2021 Apr 10;taab059. Link to the abstract is here https://academic.oup.com/jtm/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jtm/taab059/6219917 Thanks so much to all those who assisted with this project. […]
Tuberculin / Mantoux Skin Test for TB
January 10th, 2020The tuberculin skin test is also known as the Mantoux test or the PPD test. This test is to find out how much exposure someone has had to the Tuberculosis or TB germ over the course of their life. However, the test cannot tell you if the exposure was 3 months ago or 30 years ago. […]
TB vaccine and Diabetes
October 14th, 2018The Tuberculosis (TB) BCG vaccine is normally given to children under 5 years of age, and is often given at birth in the developing world, especially where TB is common. In Australia, we usually only give this vaccine to small children who will be visiting countries where TB is common. TB vaccine and Diabetes Recent research […]
Drug-free holidays and malaria prevention
October 9th, 2018We are very pleased to report that our recent research project was published in a very respected journal: Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID). AND we received this notification in April 2019 As editor-in-chief of Clinical Infectious Diseases and on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, I would like to thank you for your contribution to our journal […]