Prof. Walsh joined the University of Oxford in 2021 to help established the Ineos Oxford Institute of Antimicrobial Research. Neonatal sepsis causes an estimated 2.5 million infant deaths annually, with LMICs in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia having the highest mortality rates. The World Health Organisation recommends the use of ampicillin and gentamicin for the empirical treatment of neonatal sepsis. Previous research found that globally an estimated 214,000 neonatal sepsis deaths are attributable to resistant pathogens each year, so changing the recommendations to ceftazidime and amikacin could drastically reduce this number. Therefore, further work is urgently needed to improve the sparsity of data in LMICs regarding prevalence and AMR in neonatal sepsis, a major contributor to neonatal mortality and to determine more effective alternative empirical treatments, taking affordability into account.'
