Alex Kwame Owusu-Ofori

I currently spend my time in academia lecturing clinical microbiology to a wide range of students including Medical, Nursing, Midwifery, Medical Imaging, Medical Laboaratory and Physician assistant students. I have been supervising undergraduate and post graduates, including masters and PhD students. The core areas that I worked in with my recent PhD and masters students include Nasopharyngeal carriage of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the community and among sickle cell patients attending their clinic and Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus where I evaluated carriage rates among healthworkers and patients and the disease burden of MRSA.  Epidemiology of Extended spectrum beta lactamase (ESBL) producing Gram negative organisms is another area that I have worked diligently over the past few years.In the hospital, I lead the Infection Prevention and Control Committee and run the the clinical microbiology laboratory of the 2nd biggest teaching hospital in Ghana. The lab is responsible for bacteriological cultures of all body fluids including blood, urine, CSF etc. In a currently on-going observational sepsis study in KATH, I serve as the co-investigator.I am interested in transfusion-transmitted infections as a component of infections that patients acquired in hospitals. I pursued a PhD on transfusion-transmitted infections with a focus on malaria, syphilis and other bacteria. Subsequently I have remained active in the area of improving blood safety. My work demonstrated the transmissibility of infections and as a follow up to my research activities; our research team partnered a private company and our collaborator from University of Cambridge to successfully evaluate pathogen reduction technology in whole blood.