Winners of the Global Sepsis Awards 2017

Every year, the GSA rewards outstanding efforts in the fight against sepsis with the 'Global Sepsis Awards'.
These outstanding efforts include excellent sepsis awareness and education initiatives, as well as recognize major achievements of governments, organizations and individuals, consistent with the aims of the World Sepsis Declaration and World Sepsis Day Movement. An award jury comprised of internationally recognized experts in patient safety and sepsis management evaluated all award submissions and identified award recipients. The Global Sepsis Awards are sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation.

The awards will be presented to the winners in a ceremony in the context of international or national critical care meetings, such as the International Sepsis Forum (ISF) in Paris.

Our congratulations to the winners in 2017:

Category II: Non-governmental organizations, patient advocate groups or healthcare provider groups

**Sepsisdialog University Hospital of Greifswald, Germany**

Sepsisdialog, under the leadership of Matthias Gründling, has achieved the following milestones in the the framework of the SepNet Study Group:

Decreased sepsis mortality at the University Hospital Greifswald well below the German average, as well as compared to other German academic medical centers
Successful outreach with educational efforts on sepsis recognition and implementation quality improvement initiatives in their region
Initiated and supported regional and national studies on the epidemiology of sepsis
Participated in important clinical effectiveness research of the SepNet Study Group

**Kamal Osman Mirghani from the Sudanese Sepsis Alliance**

The jury was impressed on what the Sudanese Sepsis Alliance has achieved so far:

Increasing Awareness for Sepsis on the local, regional and national level and celebrating World Sepsis Day in Sudan
Involving nurses, doctors and medical students in educational efforts
Implementing evidence based guidelines for the prevention and management of sepsis
Championing the Sudan Sepsis Alliance and promoting the creation of the African Sepsis Alliance

Category III: Individuals

The jury decided to award Adam Linder from Sweden; they were very impressed on what he and his colleagues have achieved in Sweden in only a few years:

Founding the Swedish Sepsis Society and organizing national sepsis meetings
Performing important polls on the knowledge about sepsis in Sweden
Conducting and publishing pertinent studies on the epidemiology of Sepsis that suggest that the burden of sepsis may still be underestimated
Involving patients and families in their work
Reaching out to high profile media representatives, showing an incredible commitment and passion for improving the quality of sepsis care by creating sepsis awareness and sensitizing health care professionals in his hospital and region

As member of the Croatian Nurses Society of Anesthesiology, Reanimatology, Intensive Care and Transfusion Jelena Slijepčević has launched the campaign „Stop Sepsis“ in Croatia in 2014. In her capacity as president of the campaign, she achieved to roll out this initiative on the national level. The focus is to achieve a better understanding of sepsis by lay people and health care workers, especially to foster the knowledge that early recognition of sepsis is crucial and that sepsis is an emergency like heart attack and stroke.

She and her colleagues over the years continuously increased the outreach of their campaign not only by celebrating World Sepsis Day on September 13th every year but also by organizing meetings with physicians and nurses, as well as by involving policy makers in their activities. Finally, they published on sepsis in appropriate journals and had an impressive press coverage on their activities and the burden of sepsis in the media.

In category I, Hermann Gröhe, German Minister of Health from 2013 to 2018, was honored with the GSA Award. Due to a very tight schedule, he received his GSA Award in 2018.

Marvin ZickJune 14, 2017