Kayleigh Hansford is a Vector-borne disease scientist at Public health England, based at Porton Down. Kayleigh joined PHE having completed a degree in Microbiology and has since earned a master’s degree in Global Health and Infectious Diseases.
She has been working in the Medical Entomology and Zoonoses Ecology team for over 5 years, gaining valuable experience in assessing the risk of vector-borne disease to UK and European public health through field, desk and lab-based investigations. More recently, she has been focusing on the risk of ticks and tick-borne disease in urban green spaces and also the importation risk of ticks on recently travelled or imported pets.
Recent media coverage about Borrelia miyamotoi has prompted some questions about prevalence of the bacteria in the UK and risk to human health. In this Q&A, PHE scientists answer questions about the bacteria which has been dubbed responsible for the …
As part of our remit for protecting public health in England, we run a ‘Tick Recording Scheme’ (TRS) which receives ticks found by members of the public, GPs, vets and those working with wildlife. This enables us to map tick …
