“Place a value on yourself and be open to the tremendous potential that each of us has within us”.

This is the stated position of Professor Alison Nicholson, Head of the Department of Microbiology at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and Chair of the Infection Prevention and Control Committee of the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI).

Nicholson, a senior university lecturer, has told her students “Don’t try and fit into someone else’s shoes”.

“Wear your own shoes and as you do, your shoes will expand. Your feet will expand to fill them and you will continue to grow,” she advised.

The consultant medical microbiologist, a graduate of Montego Bay High School, focuses on the study of the microorganisms that are capable of infecting and causing diseases in humans. She describes herself as the reluctant doctor.

According to Nicholson, she enrolled in the UWI’s medical faculty at the insistence of her mother. She would fall in love with medicine by the time she graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery and has never looked back since. She worked in her private medical practice before going to work at the UHWI where she has made her mark in a decades-long career.

Nicholson would go on to complete a Doctorate in Medical Biology, specialising in bacteriology. She has since dedicated her time to working to understand the realities of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) which is making it ever more difficult to treat certain infections.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), antimicrobial resistance “occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death”.

AMR is fuelled by, among other things, the overuse, and improper use and abuse of antibiotics worldwide. It has been named as one of the world’s top 10 public health threats and is projected to cause as many as 10 million deaths by 2050.

Nicholson’s study of the occurrence of these so-called superbugs in local health facilities has found that incidence of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Jamaica is not as high as elsewhere in the world. Nonetheless, she is cognisant of the fact that without public education and changes in the use and prescribing of medicine as well as more rigorous infection control practices, there could be an increase of such incidents locally.

The microbiology professor is currently spearheading the drive to educate the health sector and the public about the dangers of drugs such as antibiotics becoming powerless to treat certain diseases.

She has collaborated with the Ministry of Health and Wellness with a view to developing a national AMR surveillance plan.

Regionally, Nicholson has been a member of the Antimicrobial Technical Working Group, working alongside representatives of the Pan American Health Organisation and the WHO.

In 2015, Nicholson co-founded the Caribbean Association of Micorbiologists. The aim of the Association is to mobilise colleagues to play a more active role in researching and monitoring AMR in the region.

To date, Nicholson has played a lead role in the UHWI’s response to such diseases as Zika, Chik V and influenza, among others, and was at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19.

She said her biggest support has come from her family and has given credit to her husband Michael who she describes as her biggest cheerleader, and her children – Natalie, Theodore and Danya and their families.