Dr.Limmathurotsakul is a distinguished researcher and physician specializing in melioidosis (an infection caused by the Gram-negative bacillus Burkholderia pseudomallei), sepsis and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). He serves as the Head of Microbiology at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), a Professor of Epidemiology at Mahidol University, Thailand and a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, UK.
Dr. Limmathurotsakul is regarded as a global leader in melioidosis with his extensive publications on epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Using modelling and statistical approaches, he estimated that B. pseudomallei causes an infection in about 165,000 people per year worldwide, and 89,000 (54%) of those people die. He estimated that melioidosis is severely underreported in the 45 countries in which it is known to be endemic and probably endemic in a further 34 countries that have never reported the disease. He has been raising the importance of melioidosis globally, highlighting its systematic misdiagnosis in many tropical low- and middle-income countries, and providing guidance on improving its surveillance, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention worldwide.
In 2015, he established and chaired the International Melioidosis Network (IMN) from 2015 to 2024. The IMN allows researchers, healthcare providers, and stakeholders to communicate, share working guidelines and laboratory protocols (www.melioidosis.info) and request support from other members worldwide http://groups.google.com/group/melioidosis