Burnet students from the Institute’s Global Women’s and Newborn’s Health Group have excelled, picking up two prizes at the recent Annual Congress of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ).

Polly Pavlidis won the New Investigator Award for Best Oral in Epidemiology, and Samia Aziz a poster prize for her work focused on the cost effectiveness of the drug Tranexamic Acid for treatment of post-partum haemorrhage.

Taking part in the Congress, which was conducted virtually, was especially challenging for Ms Aziz, who’s pursuing a Masters of Science in Epidemiology at the University of Melbourne while living and working in Bangladesh.

“Most of the session times were around midnight in Bangladesh, so that was the saddest part from my end, and I teach in one of the universities here in Dhaka so I couldn’t attend most of the sessions due to the time difference,” Ms Aziz said.

“But overall, the Congress was fantastic, they ran it in a very different way, there was great access to information and presentations.

“The Burnet team had our own WhatsApp group, so I was constantly being updated with any information I needed by the WhatsApp group which was amazing.”

Dr Pavlidis’ presentation – Clinical Guidelines for Caring for Women with COVID-19 during Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Immediate Postpartum Period – was based on work completed during a six-week student placement with Burnet during her final year of medical studies at Monash University last year.

“It was essentially a rapid review of maternal health guidelines in the context of COVID-19 which is not something I’ve done before, a rapid review like this, and it’s not something that I’ve done research in before either, maternal health,” Dr Pavlidis said.

“Because of the nature of the pandemic it needed to be done quite quickly, and my experience with research is that it can be quite slow, so it was challenging getting it all together.

“It was really interesting, and the rest of the Burnet team was great to work with.”

The theme for the PSANZ Congress was Bridging Gaps in Perinatal Care.

PSANZ is a unique multidisciplinary society of Australia and New Zealand dedicated to improving health and long-term outcomes for mothers and babies.

Find out more about the work of Burnet’s Global Women’s and Newborn’s Health Group and how to support their life-saving research.