Dr Margaret Lubwama
About me
I am a Senior Lecturer and Medical Microbiologist at the Department of Medical Microbiology, Makerere University College of Health Sciences. My research area focuses on bacterial infections and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in patients. My overall vision is to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams to reduce the burden of AMR. My goal is to contribute to building systems in Africa, including education, AMR surveillance, infection prevention and control, and diagnostic and antimicrobial stewardship programs whose overall aim is to curb AMR.
I am a medical microbiologist and senior lecturer in microbiology in the College of Health Sciences at Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda). The primary goal of my research is to provide critical data that will be used to develop protocols for managing infections, hence improving survival, for patients receiving cancer treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. In my early research, I began to characterize the bacterial causes of febrile illness among patients with solid tumors and hematologic malignancies at the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI). I went on to complete the largest prospective cohort study to date investigating the risk factors, microbiology, and outcomes of febrile neutropenia in patients with hematologic malignancies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Currently, I am utilizing next generation sequencing to identify the full spectrum of pathogens among patients with cancer and febrile neutropenia in Uganda. Additionally, in order to create informed infection prevention and control protocols, we have begun mapping the transmission routes of related multidrug resistant bacteria in the wards at the UCI and I serve as a collaborator in a study investigating Gastrointestinal colonization with drug resistant bacteria in Ugandan patients with cancer and HIV. Given my passion for improving clinical management of infections among patients with cancer, we are collaborating with pharmacists at the UCI to develop antimicrobial stewardship interventions to improve antimicrobial management in this patient population.
My work also aims to improve laboratory systems in SSA. Under my leadership as the Laboratory Director of the Makerere University Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, the lab gained accreditation from the College of American Pathologists, a rarity in SSA. Furthermore, as a senior lecturer at Makerere University, I play a significant role in teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate medical students both locally and internationally about aspects of antimicrobial resistance and the role medical students can play to curb the spread of resistant organisms in the hospital and the community.
My experience with laboratory systems improvement and microbiology diagnostics access in low-resource settings will provide the foundation for our collaboration as we work to create streamlined systems for microbiologic diagnosis of patients with cancer at UCI.
For my work in patients with cancer in Africa, I received the The Christopher Williams Award for Innovation in Cancer Care in Africa at the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) Conference in Dakar, Senegal in 2023.
This is a link to my publications: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1-oxnGi_DDHQs/bibliography/public/