Everything is everywhere: How microbes move through a city

Little is known about how bacteria spread through different sections of a city. Now the most extensive study of its kind uncovers some critical answers of how bacteria move through Nairobi, lessons that could have implications for food safety, disease outbreaks, and pandemics in the wider world. After all, what is being seen in Nairobi today could easily be in New York or Paris by tomorrow morning.

Presenters Elliot Carleton and Brenda Coromina hear from ILRI scientists Dishon Muloi and Eric Fèvre as they find out how urbanisation could produce the next disease outbreak.

1:37    Introducing... Nairobi.

3:17    What did the scientists track?

4:21    What did they expect to find?

6:32    Why 'everything is everywhere' in the microbial world

8:53    The structure within the microbial soup

10:08  How this research makes a difference

11:19  Revealing more secrets of antimicrobial resistance

13:55  What next?

14:47  Designing a city to prevent the next epidemic

Read more about this study:

A new model of pathogen transmission in developing urban landscapes

Nairobi is rapidly losing its green spaces: this could open the door to more diseases