News

It’s in your hands – prevent sepsis in health care

WHO calls on health facilities to prevent health care-associated sepsis through hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) action. Sepsis is estimated to affect more than 30 million patients every year worldwide. At the Seventieth World Health Assembly in May 2017, Member States adopted a resolution on improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sepsis.

For 5 May 2018, the theme of sepsis in health care was chosen with consideration for the current global concern about the burden of HAI and AMR spread in health care facilities. In addition to the committed IPC campaign advocates, the participation of other disciplines such as critical care medicine professionals is essential. Thus, a multidisciplinary community is invited to join the campaign:
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The European Commission called upon international, European, national and regional NGOs active in the field of vaccination to present details of their initiatives to the EU Health Award 2017. The call for applications targeted initiatives that help achieving higher level of public health for Europeans through vaccination.

There were 27 candidate NGOs which were considered for the prize, with applications coming from 16 different countries. CLEO's initiative was among the shortlisted ones. The winners of the EU Health Award for NGOs 2017 were announced on 27 November 2017 at the Award Ceremony hosted during the EU Health Policy Platform annual meeting, in presence of EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis.

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The CLEO team headed by Prof. Theoklis Zaoutis, participated in the 35th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases, ESPID 2017, that took place in Madrid, Spain, from 23-27 May, 2017. This conference was attended by paediatricians, infectious practitioners, microbiologists and researchers involved in the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of infections in children, from all over the world. During the conference, research studies about infections and vaccines against infections were presented. 

In addition, distinguished scientists presented the latest developments in the aforementioned fields of research through a series of lectures or training seminars. Several research papers related to infants and children also came from Greece, while CLEO participated with the following abstracts:

Increasing Healthcare Workers'(HCW) Uptake of Seasonal Influenza Vaccination (SIV) in a Tertiary Pediatric Hospital in Greece

Key Determinants for the Development of Recurrent Invasive Infections in Neonates: Data from the Neonin Network on Behalf of the Neonatal Infection Surveillance Network (NEONIN)

Healthcare Worker Perceptions of the Barriers to Preventing Hospital-Acquired Infections in Greek Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Healthcare-Associated Factors Correlated with Neonatal Coagulase-Negative Staphylococcus spp. Infection

Healthcare-Associated Factors Correlated with Nosocomial Neonatal Enterococcal Infection

Epidemiology of Enterococcus spp. Infections from the Neonin Infection Surveillance Network

The CLEO team also participated in the 9TH ESPID RESEARCH MASTERCLASS (ERMC), a closed, seminar type of forum for active paediatric infectious diseases (PID) research groups in Europe. The primary aim of ERMC is to provide better opportunities for young researchers to present their studies and discuss their research with other junior colleagues as well as with European research group leaders. During the Masterclass, the junior researchers will be trained how to present their data, ask questions or chair a session. The second aim of the seminar is to provide the researchers a better view of recent PID research in Europe and also to stimulate discussions of new research collaborations among ESPID members.​

Hand hygiene is at the core of effective IPC (Infection Prevention Control) to combat antibiotic resistance, and campaigning each year on around 5 May is one important part of improving behavior towards IPC best practices.

WHO’s 5 May 2017 campaign slogan, “Fight antibiotic resistance – it’s in your hands” demonstrates the unity between AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance) and infection efforts.
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CLEO which represents the view that the simplest and most effective way of preventing hospital infections is the implementation of good hand hygiene practice provided support to public hospitals and participated in this day’s events.