Patricia Tauran

A medical doctor and clinical pathologist from Indonesia, Patricia Tauran has been a Research Physician at MORU since 2019, after collaborating with Dr Direk Limmathurotsakul since 2015 on melioidosis and the diagnosis of blood stream infections in Indonesia. Supported by NIHR-Wellcome Partnership for Global Health Research International Master’s Fellowship, Patricia is currently working on antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections (ARBI), and will evaluate prevalence, incidence rates and mortality attributable to ARBI and potential biases caused by underuse of blood culture in a tertiary-care hospital in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.  

Patricia's original primary research interest was in the extent of melioidosis in Indonesia. Her publications have reported the first three indigenous melioidosis cases in Sulawesi and discussed all documented melioidosis cases in Indonesia. Hypothesizing that the lack of awareness of melioidosis in Indonesia could be partially due to underuse of blood cultures, she has compared capacity and utilization of blood cultures in two referral hospitals in Indonesia and Thailand. This underuse of blood cultures will have wide ranging impact beyond the diagnosis of melioidosis, in particular on the recognition and treatment of antimicrobial drug resistance and the estimation of its related health burden.