Question: Why do you look at pneumonia in particular?

Hannah Greenwood answered on 18 Jun 2015:

I’m interested in diseases of old age. Pneumonia is a disease that we rarely get when we are young (less that 40 years old) however when we get older (50 years or older) then this disease become life threatening. Thise people who do survive the infection (and most people don’t) end up with a severely reduced quality of life – they need help doing the most basic of tasks such as eating, dressing, walking. Basically their life is not the same again.
Pneumonia is also a very expensive disease to treat due to the large numbers of people who are admitted into hospital with it each year.
So thinking about all of this, if I can find a way to improve outcomes (the number of people surviving and keeping a good quality of life afterwards) then I think it would be a good use of my time.