Thank you so much for participating in World Sepsis Day last month - you hosted countless events all over the world to raise awareness for sepsis, the most preventable cause of death worldwide.

Like in the previous years, we will summarize all events on the 2018 WSD Event Poster - please submit your event now to be featured on the poster - submissions will close on October 31st, 2018.

Important: Please point your colleagues and friends to our website to submit their event - www.worldsepsisday.org/wsdposter

Please note that you can only upload one picture per event, so make sure to choose the best/the most representative one.

Since the poster will eventually be printed, we require a certain picture quality. If the form gives you an error message that the picture is too small, please make sure you get the original file off the camera or smartphone, without compressing it. Please don’t submit pictures you have received through WhatsApp, as it compresses pictures beyond recognition.

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. If you have trouble accessing the form, please try a different browser, a different device, a different network, or get in touch.

We plan to complete the poster by late November/early December, 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.

The fourth session of the 2nd World Sepsis Congress ‘Epidemiology of Sepsis’ is now available to view on YouTube (embedded above) and as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts (iTunes link).
It is chaired by Jeremy Kahn from the US and features the following presentations and speakers:

• National Estimates for China – Bin Du

• Global and National Estimates Using ICD Data – Carolin Fleischmann-Struzek

• Mapping Disease in Resource-Limited Settings – Rahsan Haniffa

• National Estimates Using Electronic Heath Records – Chanu Rhee

• National Estimates for Sweden Based on Chart Review – Adam Linder

• Challenges to Assess the Global Burden of Sepsis – Kristina Rudd

Sessions are released weekly on Thursdays. The next session is ‘Improving Early Detection and Quality of Care’ on October 18th, 2018. Please head over to the 2nd WSC website for the full release schedule.

The 2nd WSC is brought to you free of charge by the Global Sepsis Alliance, fostering our aspiration to bring knowledge about sepsis to all parts of the world. If you enjoyed it, please consider making a donation.

The new World Sepsis Day Infographics are now available in Spanish.

Please download them and feel free to use them as you see fit, on your social media channels, printed at your events, and everywhere in between.

Like the English version, there is a total of 21 infographics, nine on sepsis itself, ranging from symptoms, sources, prevention, risk groups, to physiology, post-sepsis symptoms, and more. Additionally, there are two on hand-washing, and ten more pointing out the relationship to other World Health Days, such as World Malaria Day, World AIDS Day, World Immunization Week, and more.

The infographics are available as images (.png), as well as optimized for print (.pdf).

Please support us to make sure the Spanish infographics are used widely. Thanks so much, we really can’t do it without you.

If you like them, please use them and tell your colleagues and friends about sepsis and World Sepsis Day. If you don’t, or have suggestions for improvements, please get in touch.

We will be translating the infographics to more languages later this year.

Our beautiful twin daughters, Lucy and Sophie, graced our lives on December 29th, 2001 — right on time to spend our first New Year’s Eve together as a family back home.

From a young age, the twins showed an interest in gymnastics. While some would say they were naturals, Sophie often had stage fright during competitions. That's when Lucy would quickly step in and pretend to be her: she even took both the gold and bronze medal in one competition!

Lucy’s gymnastics career advanced quickly. She joined the Welsh Gymnastics Squad and performed internationally in Turin, Italy. She wasn’t a fan of Italian food though and lived on peanuts all week. In 2017, she joined the King Edmund Gym Club in Bristol where she amazed us with her strength and determination. Her hope was to compete in the Olympics one day.

But after a weekend of flu-like symptoms in May 2018, Lucy was referred to the hospital on a Monday morning. She was treated for 12 hours for chest pains and breathing difficulties, but with no diagnosis. Following numerous blood tests and X-rays, she had mottling in her legs. Eventually, a CT scan showed fluid around her heart.

Before we knew it, Lucy was rushed to an operating room and had the fluid drained. For a brief moment, she was stable and without pain. But within an hour, she had to be put into an induced coma while they tried to find the cause of what they believed to be sepsis. We had no idea of how serious sepsis could be until this point.

My 78-year-old father had been treated for sepsis just five months earlier, and due to Australian flu being rife, his doctors managed to identify and treat it. But how was this happening to our fit, athletic daughter?

A consultant walked into the family room and told us the news we’d been dreading: they could not find the cause of the sepsis, there was no sign of improvement. In fact, it was likely that Lucy would die. In utter panic, Sophie threw her drink across the room and fainted, and we all broke down.

After a couple of hours, Lucy arrested, and Cath and I watched as our daughter had to be brought back to life before her condition deteriorated further. She arrested again, and a specialist team was called from the Royal Brompton Hospital with an ECMO to filter her blood. Despite being manufactured just down the road in Swansea, there wasn’t a single hospital in Wales with an ECMO at hand and the wait for the helicopter was two hours. Before the team could make it, our daughter tragically passed away.

Our lives changed forever on May 15th. Our family and friends are still struggling to come to terms with the loss. The grief of losing Lucy is just indescribable. However, we’ll always think back to our time in Turin for her gymnastics competition. She sat me down at some point and said that she wanted to be remembered for something, that she wanted to be written in history books for being someone that made a difference to this world.

She certainly did make a difference to a lot of people in her short life. Her family and friends meant everything to her, and she was full of love, kindness, and empathy for everyone at home, at school and the gym.

And we’ve established the Lucy Ellis Foundation in her memory: a Welsh registered charity on a mission to save and transform lives. Through the foundation, we’re campaigning for better awareness of sepsis, raising money for specialist equipment and training for hospitals in Wales, and offering athletic scholarships to help underprivileged children and teens pursue their dreams — something we know Lucy would be proud of. Together, we can make a difference.

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The article above was written by Neil Ellis, Lucy’s father, 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 Neil and his family for sharing Lucy’s story and for fighting to raise awareness of sepsis.

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To help us avoid similar stories in the future, please consider donating to support our cause. Thank you.

The third session of the 2nd World Sepsis Congress ‘The Different Faces and Challenges of Sepsis’ is now available to view on YouTube (embedded above) and as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts (iTunes link).
It is chaired by Nathan Nielsen from the US and features the following presentations and speakers:

• Sepsis and Recovery in the Elderly – Hannah Wunsch

• Sepsis in Meningitis – Diederik van de Beek

• Sepsis in Ebola Virus Disease – Shevin Jacob

• Sepsis in Seasonal, Avian, and Swine Flu – Robert Fowler

• Sepsis in Malaria and Dengue Fever – Pravin Amin

• Sepsis in Cancer Patients – Imrana Malik

Sessions are released weekly on Thursdays. The next session is ‘Epidemiology of Sepsis’ on October 11th, 2018. Please head over to the 2nd WSC website for the full release schedule.

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The survey to give feedback on the 2nd WSC will close on Sunday, October 7th. If you haven’t made your voice heard yet, please participate in this 3-min survey to tell us what you liked about the 2nd WSC and what could be improved. Thanks!

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The 2nd WSC is brought to you free of charge by the Global Sepsis Alliance, fostering our aspiration to bring knowledge about sepsis to all parts of the world. If you enjoyed it, please consider making a donation.

You are hereby invited to our next World Sepsis Day Supporter Meeting, which takes place on October 23rd at ESICM LIVES 2018 in Paris, France.

Main topics will be a summary of this year’s GSA activities, an outlook for 2019, as well as a look back on the 7th World Sepsis Day and the 2nd World Sepsis Congress, our free online congress bringing knowledge about sepsis to all parts of the world.

• Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018

• 12:15 to 14:15 (lunch break of ESICM)

• Meeting Room: BM2

• Snacks will be provided

• Download preliminary agenda (PDF)

Participation is free of charge and open to everyone. If you want to attend, please sign up here.

The European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) is an association of individual persons. Founded in March 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland, ESICM is a non-profit making international association. ESICM supports and promotes the advancement of knowledge in intensive care medicine, in particular the promotion of the highest standards of multidisciplinary care of critically ill patients and their families through education, research, and professional development.

The second session of the 2nd World Sepsis Congress ‘Antimicrobial Therapy and Source Control I’ is now available to recap on YouTube (embedded above) and as a Podcast on Apple Podcasts (iTunes link).
It is chaired by Alison Fox-Robichaud from Canada and features the following presentations and speakers:

• How to Improve Outcome in Staphylococcal Sepsis – Mathias Pletz

• Do Inhaled Antimicrobials Play a Role? – Jean Chastre

• Novel Antibiotics to Overcome Resistance – Tobias Welte

• Finding the Source of Sepsis – Charles Gomersall

• Surgical Source Control – John Marshall

• Choosing the Right Antimicrobials in Resource-Limited Settings – Arjen Dondorp

Sessions are released weekly on Thursdays. The next session is ‘The Different Faces and Challenges of Sepsis’ on October 4th, 2018. Please head over to the 2nd WSC website for the full release schedule.

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We want to make World Sepsis Congress better from year to year, and your feedback helps us tremendously to do that. If you haven’t yet, please participate in this 3-min survey to tell us what you liked about the 2nd WSC and what could be improved. Thanks!

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The 2nd WSC is brought to you free of charge by the Global Sepsis Alliance, fostering our aspiration to bring knowledge about sepsis to all parts of the world. If you enjoyed it, please consider making a donation.

Hermann Gröhe, German Minister of Health from 2013 to 2018 and Member of the German Bundestag was honored with the GSA Award in category I for his contribution to getting the World Health Assembly to adopt the WHO Resolution on Sepsis.

Without his leadership and initiative in uniting the German-speaking European countries (Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland) the WHO Resolution on Sepsis, which is widely accepted as a quantum leap in the global fight against sepsis, would have been massively delayed at least.

Prof. Konrad Reinhart, Chair of the Global Sepsis Alliance and member of the GSA Awards Jury presented the Global Sepsis Award to Hermann Gröhe at the opening session of the 20th Capital Congress of DGAI in Berlin on September 20th, 2018.

“The adoption of the resolution ‘Improving the Prevention, Diagnosis, and Clinical Management of Sepsis’ in 2017 by the representatives of the 194 member states of the World Health Assembly is considered a quantum leap in the fight against sepsis.”

— Prof. Konrad Reinhart, Chair Global Sepsis Alliance

“Over the past 1.5 years, many countries on every continent have used the resolution to adopt national strategies for better prevention and early detection of sepsis. Those are great news for millions of people!”

— Hermann Gröhe, Former German Minister of Health and Member of the German Bundestag

Prior awardees in category I, Governments and Healthcare Authorities, were UK Secretary of Health Jeremy Hunt, the Turkish Minister of Health Mehmet Müezzinoğlu, and German Chancellery Minister Helge Braun. Awardees of the Global Sepsis Award are chosen by the GSA Award Jury, a panel of internationally recognized experts in patient safety and sepsis management. The GSA Awards are sponsored by the Erin Kay Flatley Memorial Foundation.