The new global public health threat of Zika virus headlines our latest edition of IMPACT magazine. The recent emergence of Zika virus, now estimated to be in 69 countries across the globe, is causing concern especially with the established links to tragic birth defects and neurological syndromes.

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared Zika a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, placing it on the same priority list as Ebola. Burnet researchers Associate Professor Heidi Drummer and Dr Phillippe Boeuf discuss the available data, the impact the virus is having and what global research effort is needed.

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Also in this edition, Burnet’s Myanmar Country Program Manager Lia Burns talks about the Institute’s adolescent health programs in a country where 28 per cent of the population is aged under 25.

And with HIV no longer the death sentence it once was, IMPACT examines the new generation of people living with HIV as they approach old age. Dr Clovis Palmer, head of Burnet’s HIV Immuno-metabolism Group talks about the particular health challenges these people face.

The work of mathematicians and data statisticians is celebrated, with a story about how big data saves lives that features Burnet’s Head of Infectious Disease Modelling Professor David Wilson.

And we check out the latest Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies research project underway in East New Britain in Papua New Guinea, which is addressing the country’s staggeringly high rate of maternal and newborn death.

View the entire magazine online.