Every year on May 5th, the World Health Organization and its commited partners all around the world celebrate World Hand Hygiene Day as a call to action for health workers, but also to stimulate the general public for why hand hygiene is so crucially important.

This year, the slogan is "It's in your hands - prevent sepsis in health care".

To honor this special occasion,  we are excited to launch the Clean Hands Challenge:

This is a challenge to all health institutions of the world; hospitals, medical schools, nursing or any health area, government offices, laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and many more. All are invited to participate in order to promote awareness about hand hygiene and sepsis. These are the steps:

1. Register your institution (name of the institution, city, country, responsible person and email of the responsible person) using the form above.
2. Establish a stand at the entrance to your facility.
3. Integrate a team of people (doctor, nurse, resident, fellow...) to train all people who come to your facility on the importance of hand hygiene and explain what sepsis is and how to prevent it (hygiene of hands, vaccination, and proper use of antimicrobials, etc.).
4. After a person has received the information, ask them to be registered in a list along with their email (explain that the emails will be used to send information about World Sepsis Day and promote awareness about sepsis, but only if the check the field on the right).
5. Take a lot of pictures and upload them to social networks with the hashtag #HandHygiene, #Sepsis #(YourCountry) @WorldSepsisDay
6. Send us the record of all the people who were trained during these days, per email to office@world-sepsis-day.org, with the topic "Clean Hands Hygiene).

All participating institutions that demonstrate their activities will receive a certificate and the institutions with the most activity will be named winners of this challenge.

What are you waiting for? It’s in your hands prevent sepsis in health care!

Sepsis affects around 30 million people every year, with 6 to 9 million deaths. That means more than 21 million people survive sepsis every year. Many suffer from the consequences for the rest of their lives. Some of the consequences are obvious, such as missing limbs or organ dysfunction, like kidney failure. Some are less obvious, such as memory loss or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Our friends from the Sepsis Alliance and the Society of Critical Care Medicine have made a short 4-min video on life after sepsis - we highly recommend watching it!

On Tuesday, March 20th, 2018, the Global Sepsis Alliance, under the patronage of the EU Commissioner for Health & Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis, hosted the event 'Sepsis - The Most Preventable Cause of Death and Disability in Europe - A Call to EU Action' in Brussels, Belgium. More than 120 people from different backgrounds and nationalities participated and enjoyed the keynote of Commissioner Andriukaitis and the presentations of Edward Kelley, Director Service Delivery and Safety from the WHO, Konrad Reinhart, Chair of the Global Sepsis Alliance, Ron Daniels, Founder and CEO of the UK Sepsis Trust, and Gary Cohen, President of Global Health from BD, as well as the personal story of Dennis Kredler, who is a sepsis survivor. All presentations can be downloaded below.

In the second part of the event, we founded the European Sepsis Alliance (ESA), which aims to unite European GSA Members and develop and implement a Pan-European sepsis strategy. In four working groups (Quality Improvement of Early Diagnosis and Management, Awareness Raising and Lobbying, Patient and Family Advocacy, and Research), we laid the foundation for this important milestone.

Before closing, the participants, representing major European stakeholders in the fight against sepsis, unamimously adopted The Brussels Sepsis Resolution (download below), which urges the European Commission, Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament:

• To endorse the WHO Resolution on Sepsis and to encourage all European countries accordingly to develop national Action Plans and strategies to improve prevention, recognition, management, and rehabilitation of sepsis;
• To support a comprehensive Pan-European infection management strategywith sepsis as a key element
• To promote awareness on sepsis by organizing an European Sepsis Week around World Sepsis Day (September 13th)
• To encourage and support the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) to engage in sepsis education for citizens and healthcare professionals following the shining example of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US and similar initiatives in the UK and elsewhere,
• To consider the inherent links between AMR, ICP and sepsis in the new resolution of the EU Parliament to tackle antimicrobial resistance;
• To expand existing EU research programs on Infection control and AMR to better understand the human, medical, and economic burden of sepsis for Europe and to support the development of innovations to shorten and improve the diagnosis and management of sepsis and reduce the burden of its sequelae for survivors

To become involved in the European Sepsis Alliance, please get in touch.

Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York State, was honored with a GSA Award for implementing life-saving sepsis protocols in all New York State hospitals. These protocols, also known as 'Rory Regulations', named after Rory Staunton, who died of sepsis in 2012 in New York, have saved more than 5,000 lives already, and will save countless in the future. Since their introduction, there has been a 20 percent increase in the identification of sepsis and a decrease in sepsis mortality rates in adults from 30.2 percent to 25.4 percent in New York.

Dr. Carl Flatley, founder of the Sepsis Alliance and the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation, presented the Global Sepsis Award to Marcus Friedrich, the Chief Medical Officer to the New York State Department of Health, who accepted the award on behalf of Governor Cuomo.

“New York State has been leading the fight against sepsis and, as the data shows, our efforts are working to save lives and increase early detection and treatment of this deadly condition,” said New York State Commissioner of Health Dr. Howard Zucker. “Thanks especially goes to Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton for their advocacy and continuing to fight in Rory’s memory to prevent further tragedies. It is our hope the rest of the nation recognizes the success that can be achieved by using Rory’s Regulations as a model for combatting and ultimately ending sepsis infections once and for all.”

— Dr. Howard Zucker, New York State Commissioner of Health

“The sepsis protocols implemented by Governor Cuomo are already saving lives and will save many more,“ said Dr. Carl Flatley, who is also Chairman of the GSA Awards Jury. “If these types of protocols had been in place in Florida when my daughter Erin became ill with sepsis, they may have saved her life.”

— Dr. Carl Flatley, Chair GSA Awards Jury

Prior awardees in the category of Governments and Healthcare Authorities were UK Secretary of Health J. Hunt, the Turkish Minister of Health M. Müezzinoglu, and Federal Minister of State to Chancellor A. Merkel Helge Braun. The Global Sepsis Award winners were chosen by the GSA Award Jury, which is a panel of internationally recognized experts in patient safety and sepsis management.

“The GSA Award Jury was absolutely impressed, not only by Governor Cuomo’s introduction of these protocols in all New York State hospitals, but also with his decision to carefully monitor the results of their implementation,” said Dr. Konrad Reinhart, Chair of Global Sepsis Alliance. “We hope other states and countries will follow in Governor Cuomo’s footsteps and implement similar programs that will save lives from sepsis.”

— Dr. Konrad Reinhart, Chair Global Sepsis Alliance

On March 21st, 2018, World Sepsis Day Supporters from all over the world came together at ISICEM 2018 in Brussels for the first World Sepsis Day Supporter Meeting this year. We had a jam-packed agenda - Konrad Reinhart, Chair of the Global Sepsis Alliance, Hiroki Saito from the World Health Organization, Simon Finfer, GSA Executive Board, Vida Hamilton, National Clinical Lead for Sepsis in Ireland, Tobias Gothow, General Manager of the German Sepsis Foundation, and Marvin Zick, General Manager of the GSA, all held presentations, which you can view and download below. In addition, supporters had the opportunity to report on their national activities and strategies, and what they were planning for World Sepsis Day in 2018. We thank everybody who was there and who wanted to be there - your support means the world to us!

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Konrad Reinhart, GSA - Strategy of the GSA for 2018 to 2020

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Hiroki Saito, WHO - Clean Your Hands - Prevent Sepsis in Healthcare

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Simon Finfer, GSA - Approach to National Sepsis Plan in Australia

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Vida Hamilton, HSE - Update on the Irish National Sepsis Strategy

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Tobias Gothow, GSF - Approach to National Sepsis Plan in Germany

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Marvin Zick, GSA - 2nd World Sepsis Congress

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The Sepsis Mexico Foundation will give the workshop "Integral Resuscitation of the Patient with Sepsis" during the International Conference on Emergency Medicine (ICEM 2018), organized by the International Federation of Emergency Medicine (IFEM) and the Mexican Society of Emergency Medicine AC (SMME). The course has a program taught by experts, specialists in emergency medicine, infectology and epidemiology, with topics such as: "Sepsis-3 - Definition and Controversies", "Water Resuscitation", "Volume Response Evaluation", "Rational Use of Antimicrobials", and more.
It will take place on June 5, 2018, in the pre-congress events, entirely in Spanish.

On September 5th and 6th, the Global Sepsis Alliance, initiator of World Sepsis Day and World Sepsis Congress, will host the 2nd World Sepsis Congress. The 2nd WSC is a free online congress in which over 100 renowned experts from all around the world will give presentations on all aspects of sepsis, fostering our aspiration to bring knowledge about sepsis to all parts of the world. The congress will be held in English and is open to everyone with an internet connection.

Applications and nominations for the 2018 GSA Awards will close in two weeks, on March 31st, 2018.

The GSA Awards honor major contributions in the fight against sepsis every year and are exclusively sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation.
They are granted in three categories:

1. Governments and Healthcare Authorities
2. Non-Governmental Organizations, Patient Advocate Groups, or Healthcare Provider Groups
3. Individual Nominees

In addition to glory, prestige, and a beautiful trophy, winners of category 2 and 3 are awarded with $ 2,500 each.

The deadline to apply is March 31st, 2018. Please share this call with your colleagues, friends, and other interested parties.