Dr Jocelyn Chan is a PhD student within the Pneumococcal Research group at MCRI, which is part of our Infection and Immunity theme. What are you aiming to achieve through your research? Australia is very lucky to have high rates of childhood vaccination. Because of this, we benefit from something called ‘herd immunity’, which means that even unvaccinated children and adults are protected from disease. One of these vaccines is the pneumococcal vaccine – which protects against a major cause of pneumonia, meningitis, and septicaemia. My research is about understanding how many people need to receive the pneumococcal vaccine to achieve this herd immunity in low and middle income country settings, specifically Laos, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea. These countries often struggle to achieve high rates of vaccination with limited resources. Another important part of my work is about sharing my research skills with our overseas collaborators, who may not...
