Animals living in polluted environments are potential source of antimicrobials against infectious agents

The antimicrobials crisis is a ticking time bomb which could lead to millions of people dying from untreatable infections. With the worsening trends of antimicrobial resistance, we are heading towards a pre-antibiotic era. Thus, there is a need for newer and more powerful antibiotic agents. The search for new antibiotic compounds originating from natural resources is a promising research area. Animals living in germ-infested environments are a potent source of antimicrobials. Under polluted milieus, organisms such as cockroaches encounter different types of bacteria, including superbugs. Such creatures survive the onslaught of superbugs and are able to ward off disease by producing antimicrobial substances which show potent activity in the nervous system. We hope that the discovery of antimicrobial activity in the cockroach brain will stimulate research in finding antimicrobials from unusual sources, and has potential for the development of novel antibiotics. Nevertheless, intensive research in the next few years will be required to approach or realize these expectations

Migrant health professionals’ systemic human rights vulnerabilities

This article investigates whether the methods by which states implement citizens’ human rights possess serious weaknesses for ensuring migrant health professionals’ rights. Stemming from the discipline of normative philosophy, the moral approach to human rights sees rights as implemented through multiple waves of duties delivered by state-managed integrity systems. We argue that this otherwise comparatively reliable method can fail to deliver adequate outcomes to migrant health professionals. These professionals can encounter problems stemming from the following: their lack of political priority as non-citizens; the challenges to effective monitoring of migrant health professional pathways and outcomes; the incapacity of federal lawmakers to impact on key policy levers; the ever-present threat of “pathways to nowhere”; and state-enabled employee exploitation. The findings provide a philosophically grounded foundation for acknowledging the human rights concerns of even high-skilled migrants, and show why special regimes for rights protection, facilitation and monitoring are necessary for migrant health professionals