Date and Time
Monday, March 23, 2026
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Central Time
Access Instructions
Instructions will be posted on Eventbrite and e-mailed to all registrants prior to the webinar.
Registrants are encouraged to submit questions of interest prior to the webinar to susie.taylor@umanitoba.ca.
Synopsis
Bartonella quintana is a louse-borne bacterial pathogen historically responsible for trench fever among soldiers in World War I. Today, B. quintana persists as a neglected cause of febrile illness, chronic bacteremia, and culture-negative endocarditis, with outbreaks increasingly documented across both high- and low-resource settings. Transmission is strongly linked to conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability—including homelessness, overcrowding, and displacement—where body lice remain endemic. Despite its global incidence, B. quintana’s epidemiology remains poorly described. This webinar will describe the re-emergence of B. quintana in Canada, examining transmission dynamics, disease burden, and emerging pathways of spread. The webinar will highlight how neglected bacterial infections linked to socioeconomic vulnerability remain concealed drivers of disease and mortality in Canada.
Learning outcomes
Participants will leave with an understanding of:
- Dynamics of Bartonella quintana transmission, diagnosis, and potential complications such as endocarditis
- The epidemiology of Bartonella quintana in Canada, with particular attention to how houselessness and use of shelters increases risk of infection
- Epidemiological data gaps, and the need for improved surveillance and prevention
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.
Speaker
Dr. Carl Boodman
Dr. Carl Boodman, MD, FRCPC, DTM&H, CTropMed is a Canadian infectious diseases physician, medical microbiologist, and PhD candidate whose research focuses on culture-negative bacterial infections as neglected diseases at the intersection of poverty, homelessness, migration, and public health. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Unit of Neglected Tropical Diseases at the Institute of Tropical Medicine / University of Antwerp and a Clinical Investigator Program candidate at the University of Manitoba. His doctoral research centers on Bartonella quintana, a louse-borne, culture-negative bacterium that disproportionately affects people experiencing homelessness. His work is supported by a fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), collaborative funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQ) and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), and project funding from the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID). He obtained his MD from McGill University and completed residency training in Internal Medicine (University of British Columbia), and Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology (University of Manitoba), with additional training in tropical medicine.