High-resolution historical sediment record and dissemination of micropollutants and antibiotic resistance in aquatic environment across to the different geographical location and climatic conditions.

Funding:

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology and the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (Scholarship no. 11432).

The release of pharmaceuticals into the environment is massive and frequently hazardous. Huge amounts of antibiotics are used each year in agriculture, poultry farming, dairy industry along with the health sector, and considerable parts are released into the environment. This correlates with and likely contributes to antibiotic resistance in human pathogens, rendering some infections untreatable. Multidrug resistant bacteria are not only present in hospitals, but are spreading more and more into the environment, thereby increasing the risk of infection with resistant bacteria outside the hospital. We propose in this project to perform a comparative survey of toxic metals, persistence organic pollutants and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae in aquatic environment under temperate conditions (communal effluents of Geneva Canton, Lake Geneva beaches and Rivers Rhône and Arve), and tropical conditions (river receiving systems of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Contact and supervisors:

PhD student: Dhafer Mohammed Al Salah

Supervisor: John Poté

Partners: King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Joint Centers of Excellence Program, Saudi Arabia & Universities of Kinshasa (UNIKIN and UPN, Congo DR)