Help Saving Lives from Antibiotic Resistance

I am Egyptian pharmacist with 7 years experience in community and hospital pharmacy. I am starting a Master's course in Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom in September 2020. My academic achievement and personal skills qualified me to be awarded a £6500 scholarship from Black Heart Foundation for paying tuition fees of the course. Also, I have been awarded some grants totaling £6000 from other British charitable foundations for the tuition fees.

I need your help towards living costs. I will need financial support for 12 months. The UK rules requiring to have this money in my bank account for issuing the visa.

My career goal is working in the area of health protection to contribute to saving lives by fighting infectious diseases.

I am looking to face the risk of microbial resistance for antibiotics, which increasingly threatens the success of infectious diseases treatment and prevention. This risk is not limited to one country, but all countries including the most advanced ones are in the circle of risk. Antibiotic resistance has been singled out as one of the main risks to mankind by the World Health Organization (WHO) and governments everywhere.

Without facing the antibiotic resistance, we will come back to that time before the invention of antibiotics, and many people would die from minor injuries and infections. Also, many surgeries would be hindered including caesarean sections, and the patients of some diseases such as cancer and diabetes would have a shorter life expectancy. Therefore, UK parliament urges making antimicrobial resistance as a “top five policy priority” and the government has launched a 5-year action plan for controlling antimicrobial resistance. Studying that one-year master's programme offers me a great opportunity to contribute to this containment plan.

I would achieve this goal by working in the Public Health England (PHE) where I would work on two axes: infection prevention and rational use of antibiotics.

I will participate in improving vaccination rates that have started to fall over the last two years, which has contributed to the measles outbreak in the UK in 2018 and then WHO determined that the UK could no longer be considered as ‘measles eliminated’ and that transmission of measles had been re-established. As measles is highly infectious, even small declines in vaccination rates can have an impact, and anyone who has not received both doses of MMR is at risk.

Also, I will raise the awareness of the general public and healthcare professionals about using and prescribing antibiotics in order to maintain their effectiveness. The big pharmaceutical companies are not investing in new antibiotics research because there is not a lucrative market for them as a novel antibiotic drug needs to be kept for cases of dire necessity, not sold widely.

I believe that my work will save the life of many people and save a lot of money that spent annually on treatment of resistant microbial infections which require longer hospital stay, more expensive medical interventions and lab tests. Furthermore, my work will assist in the control of contemporary coronavirus outbreak as coronavirus can cause more severe symptoms, and even death, in people with weakened immune system.

Currently, I am working in a family health unit and a community pharmacy to generate the necessary money because I realized that studying abroad will be financially challenging. But the recent hard economic conditions in my country and the currency difference have made the things unexpectedly difficult. Since 1 Pound sterling makes 20 Egyptian Pounds, it turns to a huge amount that is impossible to afford. There are no educational loans available in Egypt, and, of course, I am not eligible for loans in the UK.

If I could not get the money required for the living expenses in the UK, I would lose my exceptional scholarship. I appreciate that any amount of money you donate may not be sufficient to cover my deficit entirely, but any support would be invaluable. Your grant will give me a degree of financial security and would guarantee me a good opportunity to proceed with my studies so that I can make a constructive contribution to the health of the community.

You can find my letter of acceptance from LJMU by using this link https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aqmf3v49_AsnbDx1-FefSu2PB8E