St Mary's School Calne

Porton Down

At the end of the Autumn Term, St Mary’s girls joined with other budding scientists from the Wiltshire area to gain an insight into infectious diseases and their cures at Porton Down. 

Porton Down is home to The Health Protection Agency centre, whose work focuses on protecting the public from infectious diseases by growing and identifying them.

During the visit the students tried on Martindale containment suits that are used on field trips to investigate outbreaks, they tried dexterity texts used to train scientists for working in the microbiological safety cabinets and they were shown how bacteria is grown on agar plates and had the opportunity to identify the different diseases by their shapes and sizes.  A series of lectures on the history and successes of the organisation, how vaccines are created and on disease in the developing world, provided context to the practical side of their visit.  They also gained an insight into the pharmaceutical side of The Health Protection Agency – making vaccines and growing bacteria to make drugs.