Alison Vickery and the typing of staphylococci in Australia

Alison Vickery, who died in December 2016, played an important role in the bacteriophage typing of Staphylococcus aureus in this country. The technique was introduced by Phyllis Rountree in the 1950s at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where it was initially used to identify a particularly virulent strain of S. aureus (phage type 80/81) in the neonatal nursery.