Keith A.V. Cartwright

Professor

Public Health Laboratory

Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

Great Western Road, Gloucester GL1 3NN

United Kingdom

Tel: 00 44 1452 305334

Fax : 00 44 1452 307213

Email : KCartwright@phls.nhs.uk

            Professor Keith Cartwright graduated in medicine from Oxford University in 1971 and trained in medical microbiology in Oxford and Edinburgh. He became Director of the Gloucester Public Health Laboratory (SW England) in 1981. In 1995 he was appointed Regional Director of SW Public Health Laboratories. With the closure of the Public Health Laboratory Service in 2003, he is now Head of Intervention Policy and R&D within the Local and Regional Services Division of the newly created Health Protection Agency.

            Over the last 15 years his principal research interest has been in the epidemiology, diagnosis and management of meningococcal disease, arising out of involvement in a prolonged outbreak of meningococcal disease in the county of Gloucestershire comprising more than 250 cases over a period of some 14 years. Studies have included an evaluation of the effectiveness of pre-hospital antibiotic treatment, risk factors for meningococcal carriage and disease (including the role of influenza A infection and other viral infections), the development of molecular diagnostic tests and of clinical standards for investigation and early management.

            Together with the HPA Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, he is currently carrying out an evaluation of candidate meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines. This has included a head to head comparison of conjugated meningococcal group C vaccines and trials of a novel group B vaccine. He has also organised a European audit of clinical and laboratory management standards in meningococcal disease. He is chairman of the HPA Meningococcus Forum, and a member of the UK Department of Health’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. In 1998 he was invited to become Medical Director of the National Meningitis Trust.

            Professor Cartwright is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. He was awarded a personal chair in Clinical Microbiology by the University of Bristol in 1996. He has published more than 100 papers, chapters and reviews, and is the editor of a book on meningococcal disease.