Question: How do you use maths to find superbugs?

Ceri Dare answered on 7 Nov 2014:

Well, I look through the records of patients who have had ‘superbugs’ which are resistant to antibiotics, and compare them with patients who have had infections with ordinary bacteria, or people who haven’t had infections.

Then I try to see what sort of people are most likely to catch ‘superbugs’ – for example, we know that older people living in care homes are at more risk, and people who have previously been given lots of antibiotics, and people with certain types of wounds. At the moment I am trying to find out if being rich or poor affects whether people catch more ‘superbugs’.

Then when we know who is most at risk, we can work out why, and whether there’s anything we can do about it. For example, we know that GPs in poor areas tend to prescribe more antibiotics.

Sometimes stopping people catching the superbugs is quite easy, like making sure staff in care homes use clean hands and clean aprons for each older person they are helping. Sometimes it is more difficult – I’d like to be able to just make sure that people aren’t poor any more, because being poor causes a lot of health problems. So sometimes I or people I work with go and talk to politicians or tell big companies to pay their taxes!

I think I have a super-interesting job, because I get to look at very small things like bacteria, and very big things like how to organise society and make the world a better place.