The World Health Summit is one of the world's leading strategic conferences for global health – it brings together leading international scientists, politicians, and representatives from industry and civil society.

Usually an in-person conference in Berlin, Germany, this years special situation has made the 2020 World Health Summit an entirely digital conference. This is a great opportunity for you to participate and enjoy the 50 sessions and 300 speakers – interactive and free of charge, without a registration.

The core topic of the World Health Summit 2020 is COVID-19: Current knowledge about the virus, new strategies in the worldwide fight against pandemics, and the role of Europe and the WHO in global health. Other topics include the UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), climate change, and the latest approaches in health research.

The World Health Summit 2020 welcomes 300 speakers, including but not limited to:

• Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Federal President - Germany

• Jens Spahn, Minister of Health - Germany

• Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights - United Nations

• Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General - World Health Organization

Global health can only be improved by strengthening partnerships and international cooperation. That is why the World Health Summit actively facilitates and promotes the constructive exchange between stakeholders from all sectors in an environment of academic freedom. During the three-day summit, leading experts from science, politics, industry, and civil society discuss solutions for improving global health care.

At the end of each World Health Summit, the "M8 Alliance Declaration", a final declaration with recommendations for action for international policymakers, is drafted. The "M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centers, Universities and National Academies" is the academic backbone of the World Health Summit and currently consists of 28 academic institutions in 19 countries, including the association of National Academies of Medicine in 130 countries.

Participation in the digital World Health Summit is free of charge and possible without registration; each session can be accessed via a link in the program. There you will also find details on sessions, topics, and speakers.

The fifth session from the 2020 World Sepsis Congress Spotlight is now available on YouTube (embedded above) and as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts (just search for World Sepsis Congress in your favorite podcast app).

It was chaired by Folasade Ogunsola from Nigeria, and features the following presentations and speakers:

• WHO IPC Strategy to Prevent AMR and Sepsis – Benedetta Allegranzi, World Health Organization, Switzerland

• Keynote: Preventing Infection and Improving Health in LMICs: Lessons Learned from Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Programmes  – Kelly Ann Naylor, UNICEF, United States of America

• The Impact of BCG Vaccination on COVID-19 and Respiratory Infections – Evangelos Giamarellos, European Sepsis Alliance, Greece

• Preventing Sepsis and AMR in ICU Patients – Mervyn Mer, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Sessions are released weekly on Tuesdays. The next session will be ‘Early Identification and Appropriate Clinical Management of Sepsis Saves Lives and Prevents AMR ’ on 20 October 2020.

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The WSC Spotlight: Sepsis, Pandemics, and Antimicrobial Resistance – Global Health Threats of the 21st Century is co-organized by the World Health Organization and the Global Sepsis Alliance, initiator of World Sepsis Day and World Sepsis Congress.

Today, we are incredibly excited to officially announce the winners of the 2020 GSA Awards. While the Global Sepsis Awards, which are kindly sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, honor outstanding efforts to increase sepsis awareness and raise the quality of sepsis prevention and management, they are even more inspirational in times of COVID-19, given the close link that COVID-19 and sepsis share and the significant burden it has imposed on our time and resources.

Congratulations to all winners of the 2020 GSA Awards:

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WINNERS CATEGORY I - GOVERNMENTS AND HEALTHCARE AUTHORITIES

The winner in category I is Queensland Health, the ministerial health department of the Queensland Government in Australia.

Queensland Health and its Queensland Pediatric Sepsis Project (QPSP) have created an inspiring and effective response to tackle sepsis, highlighting their commitment to the WHO sepsis resolution and the Australian Sepsis Network Stopping Sepsis: National Action Plan.

In Queensland, sepsis represents a leading cause of preventable death and persistent harm in children, and rural and remote regions are disproportionally affected. In order to respond effectively to this, Queensland Health conducted a needs analysis and secured funding to scale up their Pediatric Sepsis Pathway. They also provided extensive interventions including;

• providing targeted sepsis and AMR education and support,

• statewide support system networks for care closer to home,

• peer mentoring for families,

• tele-health systems,

• the first Pediatric Sepsis Clinical Nurse Consultant in Australia,

• and the development of the first multi-centre Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) in sepsis research.

The Jury awarded Queensland Health for their impressive program tackling sepsis in Queensland, creating a global shining example of long-term and sustainable interventions to prevent and respond effectively to sepsis.

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WINNERS CATEGORY II - NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, PATIENT ADVOCATE GROUPS, OR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER GROUPS

The winners in category II are Sepsisfonden and the African Research Collaboration on Sepsis (ARCS).

Sepsisfonden (The Swedish Sepsis Trust) raise funding for research aiming to improve diagnosis and treatment of sepsis, and increase awareness and knowledge about sepsis among the public, policy makers, and medical staff. Sepsisfonden were awarded due to their dedicated and tireless work in increasing awareness around sepsis in Sweden.

The Jury were particularly impressed with many of their initiatives and actions in the past year - but in particular their work focusing on; creating both print and digital national sepsis awareness campaigns throughout Sweden (including this film), setting up of sepsis education school projects and creation of a film and pedagogical material for all science teachers to utilize, participating in cross discipline sepsis project - Combat Sepsis and their World Sepsis Day event with lectures, talks from survivors, and the launch of the Swedish Patient Organization.

The African Research Collaboration on Sepsis is a multinational global health research group established in April 2018. ARCS is funded by the National Institute for Health Research to build sepsis research capacity across Sub-Saharan Africa. Centers of Sepsis Research Excellence have been established in Malawi, Uganda, and Gabon, and they act as the central hubs for research activities in twelve African countries.

ARCS was awarded the GSA Award due to their network making outstanding contribution to sepsis research and capacity building across Sub-Saharan Africa. ARCS has and continues to build sustainable partnerships between research and clinical organizations, ministries of health, non-government organizations, and the commercial sector. Their sepsis incidence survey data from ten countries has meant they can begin to accurately quantify the true sepsis burden and enact evidence based policy change. Government ministries in Uganda and Malawi are now listening thanks to their work, and change is on the horizon.

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WINNERS CATEGORY III - INDIVIDUAL NOMINEES

The winners in category III are James Karugaba from Uganda and David Carlbom from the United States.

James Karugba works as the head of nursing at Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital in Uganda. The most prominent health issues in Uganda are respiratory tract infections, malaria, and diarrheal diseases, and neonatal sepsis - due to limited knowledge and finances, most patients resort to traditional healers and only appear in the hospital when they are in a critical condition.

The Jury awarded James Karugba with the GSA Award for his dedicated commitment to leading infection prevention and a control committee in the hospital, and creating necessary outreaches to villages to ensure communities are receiving support and education. In particular, his work trying to combat sepsis through creating effective prevention and treatment was very impressive.

James has successfully influenced several policies at Holy Innocents Hospital with regard to sepsis management, including setting up a new policy that all patients be given their first short of antibiotics from the outpatient department before being transferred to the ward - improving the patient outcomes drastically and helping to reduce mortality in the hospital.

David Carlbom works at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in the United States. He was nominated and chosen for the GSA Award for his many years of dedication to building a robust sepsis program at Harborview, including a high-functioning multi-disciplinary sepsis committee, innovative screening systems for sepsis to help providers recognize sepsis early, multiple educational and performance improvement programs around sepsis, and an annual sepsis conference. The Jury was particularly impressed with his achievements of the growth and reach of the Pacific Northwest Sepsis Conference - which began simply as a small internal workshop at Harborview but then expanded to nurses and providers in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montano. In 2019, the in-person two-day conference hosted more than 400 attendees from around the world. Attendees included physicians, nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, quality improvement professionals, students, and sepsis survivors.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the in-person conference for 2020 had to be cancelled. Dr. Carlbom was not deterred and despite a brutal clinical schedule in the COVID and other ICUs this spring, he continued to volunteer his time to build and produce a free virtual sepsis conference that was a huge success. The conference had more than 1800 people register for the live event on June 16, 2020, but the content was recorded and is provided free of charge on an ongoing basis so it has the potential to reach thousands of other people.

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Commendations

In addition to the 2020 GSA Award Winners above, the following organizations and individuals who have applied or have been nominated for the 2020 GSA Awards were honored by the GSA Award Jury for their excellent activities with a Certificate of Commendation:

• Kristina Rudd for her invaluable contribution to the assessment of the global burden of sepsis, with particular emphasis on her contributions to the ‘Global Burden of Sepsis’ Report in The Lancet earlier in 2020.

• Imran Ismail, Governor of Sindh, Pakistan for his commitment to improving sepsis awareness, early recognition, prevention, care and research in Pakistan. We hope the honorable governor Imran Ismail continues to prioritize sepsis through the Karachi Sepsis Declaration and the WHA Resolution on Sepsis.

Over the coming months, we will give both the 2020 GSA Award Winners as well as the activities and initiatives by the entities that were commended the possibility to share their projects and initiatives in more detail on our websites.

We would like to once again applaud all activities in the fight against sepsis and encourage others to become involved in raising awareness of sepsis – congratulations again to all 2020 GSA Award Winners.

All awardees will receive their trophy and certificate at an upcoming international congress, in a COVID-safe manner, naturally. Winners in category II and III will receive $2,500 prize money each. A huge thanks to everybody who applied.

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About the GSA Awards

The Global Sepsis Awards, which are sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, honor outstanding efforts to increase sepsis awareness and raise the quality of sepsis prevention and management. The awards are granted in three categories, namely governments and healthcare authorities, non-governmental organizations, patient advocate or healthcare provider groups, and individuals, consistent with the aims of the World Sepsis Declaration and the World Sepsis Day Movement.

Applications and nominations for the 2021 GSA Awards open in January 2021 and close on March 31st, 2021.

The fourth session from the 2020 World Sepsis Congress Spotlight is now available on YouTube (embedded above) and as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts (just search for World Sepsis Congress in your favorite podcast app).

It was chaired by Emmanuel Nsutebu from the United Arab Emirates, and features the following presentations and speakers:

• Keynote: WHO Clinical Response to Sepsis, COVID-19, and Ebola – Janet Diaz, World Health Organization, United States of America

• Managing Sepsis in COVID-19 Patients – Special Considerations – Hala Abuzeid, Abu Dhabi Health Service, United Arab Emirates

• COVID-19 Therapeutics: What We Have Learned and Where We Are Going – Marco Cavaleri, European Medicines Agency, The Netherlands

• Mobile Emergency Care Units Ebola Sepsis Improve Survival – Richard Kojan, The Alliance for International Medical Action, Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Inflammatory Response Due to COVID-19 Infection – Yee Sin Leo, National Centre for Infectious Diseases, Singapore

Sessions are released weekly on Tuesdays. The next session will be ‘A Comprehensive and Integrated Approach to Preventing Sepsis and AMR’ on 13 October 2020.

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The WSC Spotlight: Sepsis, Pandemics, and Antimicrobial Resistance – Global Health Threats of the 21st Century is co-organized by the World Health Organization and the Global Sepsis Alliance, initiator of World Sepsis Day and World Sepsis Congress.

Update Oct 8th: The webinar is available to recap here.

Original article, October 2nd, 2020:
Please save the date for the International Society of Infectious Diseases’ new online learning program, the ISID Knowledge Exchange & E-Learning Platform (IKEEP), first webinar on October 7, 2020, at 1 pm GMT (9 am New York, 3 pm Brussels). This webinar, titled ‘The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Infectious Diseases’, will feature short presentations from global infectious disease experts followed by a live moderated discussion, and it will be available on-demand after the live session on IKEEP.

COVID-19 has both short and long-term complex effects on global infectious disease priorities. We are at risk of the resurgence of some major infectious diseases, the occurrence of other community and hospital transmitted infections can be significantly reduced. During this webinar, infectious disease experts will discuss how to assess and tackle the wider impact of COVID-19 on global infectious disease priorities. Sign up today to receive your personalized link to attend.

I first came in contact with the European Sepsis Alliance in 2018 through a friend who was chairing the ESA annual meeting that year and knew of my sepsis experience. At the ESA virtual annual meeting in March 2020, I spoke as a panelist of my experience with sepsis after previously participating in the ESA Policy and Stakeholder Engagement working group. I had fully retired, aged 69, from an international career with PwC in 2015, except for working pro bono as the Executive Director of the Belgian Chapter of Transparency International (TI B). I was then a long-term patient for colon cancer since 1990 when I had undergone a successful surgery at a leading Belgian teaching hospital.

My experience with sepsis started after a regular check-up in early 2016 when it was decided to remove what was left of my colon in a procedure that would avoid the need for a stoma. I was operated on in mid-March 2016 by a successor to the professor who had operated on me in 1990 and had followed me up until his recent retirement. He had become a good friend.

After the operation, I started to run a temperature and my blood pressure was falling. My wife queried the slow response of the medical staff in the absence out of the country of the professor who had operated. She contacted our medical friend. By then I had suffered a septic shock and was in a coma. Our friend monitored the remedial treatment, which included a second operation and the placing of a permanent ileostomy. During the three weeks that I was in the intensive care unit, I suffered a cardiovascular accident and two heart stoppages before my situation was stabilized. After two months, I was moved to an independent, specialized revalidation points clinic, Inkendaal. I was largely immobile and officially classified as handicapped in Belgium with an ileostomy, hemianopsia on the right side (120° field of vision), impaired balance (no ladders, bicycles, mopeds, etc.), residual problems with one finger and toes, and some loss of memory. I was treated at Inkendaal until January 2017, first as a resident for four months, and then three days a week as an outpatient.

Now, after four years since my septic shock, I am able to swim regularly around 500 m and walk up to 10 km with Nordic sticks. I drive around 20,000 km a year and regularly spend up to five hours gardening in our large wild garden. I had to stop working as the Executive director of TI B but I am now working again a little with them. My very successful recovery was in large part thanks to the excellent revalidation program I followed at Inkendaal.

After the 2020 ESA annual meeting, I participated in the Patient and Family Support working group. I had noted that in Belgium there was no equivalent national sepsis patient and survivor group. Through Idelette Nutma, who leads the ’Sepsis en daarna’ initiative in The Netherlands, I have been able to enlist the considerable support of Carine Nelissen, a sepsis survivor, and Hans Hellinckx, Public Policy and Governmental Affairs manager of Becton Dickinson (BD Benelux). Carine had also suffered a septic shock after becoming unwell after a minor operation to deal with a kidney stone. She required ICU treatment before recovering. Carine returned to work but now, some five years later, she finds that there are still sequels, particularly becoming more easily physically tired than before. Carine, with the help of her son, has been key in developing our website and Facebook page.

Hans has been very helpful in promoting our SEPSIBEL initiative with several of his relevant contacts, as he has made it his personal ambition to put sepsis high on the Belgian political agenda. He also facilitated the meeting with Belgian politicians who have shown their support for the idea of a national action plan against sepsis. Hans plans to inform the various experts and professional (scientific) associations of specialists and nurses (intensive care, emergency care, infection prevention, and microbiology) while calling on them to support this initiative and creating an expert reflection Task Force.

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The article above was written by Michael Clarke and is shared here with his explicit consent. The views in the article do not necessarily represent those of the Global Sepsis Alliance. They are not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. The whole team here at the GSA and World Sepsis Day wishes to thank Michael for sharing his story and for fighting to raise awareness for sepsis.

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The third session from the 2020 World Sepsis Congress Spotlight is now available on YouTube (embedded above) and as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts (just search for World Sepsis Congress in your favorite podcast app).

It was chaired by Maha Talaat from the World Health Organization, and features the following presentations and speakers:

• Keynote: One-Health-Approach to AMR and Global Health Threats – Ilaria Capua, Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida, United States of America

• Novel Medicines Project: Driving Reinvestment in Research and Development and Responsible Antibiotic Use – Stephan Harbarth, Infection Control Programme, Geneva University Hospitals, Switzerland

• Cost-Effective Interventions to Combat AMR – Imran Hasan, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh

• AMR in Neonates and Children with Sepsis in LMICs – Mike Sharland, St George‘s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United KingdomDrivers of and Inequalities in the Burden of Sepsis in LMICs – Flavia Machado, Global Sepsis Alliance, Brazil

• Antimicrobial Stewardship in Limiting Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms – Jameela Alsalman, Ministry of Health, Bahrain

Sessions are released weekly on Tuesdays. The next session will be ‘Sepsis, Ebola, and COVID-19’ on 6 October 2020.

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The WSC Spotlight: Sepsis, Pandemics, and Antimicrobial Resistance – Global Health Threats of the 21st Century is co-organized by the World Health Organization and the Global Sepsis Alliance, initiator of World Sepsis Day and World Sepsis Congress.

Update September 28th, 2020: We have extended the deadline for uploads to Monday, October 12th, 2020. Please upload your event soon.

Original post, September 14th, 2020:
Yesterday, 13 September, was World Sepsis Day. Countless events all over the world raised awareness for sepsis, the most preventable cause of death worldwide - thank you so much for participating.

Like in the previous years, we will summarize all events on the 2020 WSD Event Poster - please upload your event now, it takes less than a minute. The form closes on October 12th, please upload your event before that date.

Important Instructions - Read Carefully

1. If you are not seeing the form, please enable JavaScript on your browser or use a different device.

2. Please note that you can only upload one picture per event (the poster gets too crowded otherwise) – please choose the best/the most representative one.

3. If you hosted multiple events, please submit them individually.

4. Since the poster will eventually be printed, please make sure to submit a high-quality image. Try to avoid compressed files. Compressing can happen when sending pictures through messengers, such as WhatsApp. In such a case, please get the original file from the person who took the picture, or ask that person to upload the picture directly. Uploads from mobile are possible.

5. Please use only the provided form to submit your events - we can’t use pictures that are emailed to us or sent through social media.

We plan to complete the poster by November, and we will make it available for download, as well as sent out printed copies, which you will be able to order free of charge as soon as the poster is completed.

Please point your colleagues and friends to our website to submit their events, especially if you know that they did an event for World Sepsis Day – thanks so much.

If you adhered to the instructions above and have problems, or for any questions, please contact us.