ESCMID Honours Médecins Sans Frontières with Special Excellence Award  

During its 25^th European Congress held in Copenhagen (April 25-28), The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) issued a special excellence award for outstanding achievement to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The award was bestowed on the charity’s 30,000 employees - its physicians, nurses and other professional staff who regularly put their own lives at risk all across the world - in light of the huge contribution made to global health over the last 40-years and in special recognition of its enormous efforts in fighting Ebola across Africa. MSF doctor, Hilde de Clerck, received the award on behalf of the charity.

Since its inception in 1971, MSF has treated over a hundred million patients with 8.3 million outpatient consultations carried out in 2012 alone. During the recent Ebola epidemics in West Africa, where it currently employs nearly 3000 staff, the charity has shipped more than 1,400 tonnes of supplies and admitted more than 8,000 patients to Ebola management centres – almost 5,000 were confirmed with Ebola  - and remarkably about 2,300 recovered.

In light of such stunning achievements in the fight against infectious disease, ESCMID has pledged to provide its support, assistance and on-going commitment to help the charity in any of its projects moving forwards.

Four exceptional contributions to the advancement of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases recognised at ECCMID

Exceptional contributions to scientific research made by four scientists working in the field of clinical microbiology were also recognised at the 25th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID). 

Marc Bonten, who runs the Medical Microbiology department at UMC Utrecht and leads the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research Group at the Julius Center of Health Sciences and Primary Care, received the ‘ESCMID Award for Excellence in Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases 2015’.

Due to the large number of excellent Young Investigator applications this year, ESCMID found it especially difficult to select a single winner and decided to present awards to three recipients for 2015 - Carolina Garcia-Vidal (Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain), Jason Roberts (Brisbane, Australia) and Roy Sleator (Cork, Ireland).

 Marc Bonten was recognised for his ground-breaking work in the field of hospital epidemiology and ICU infections, in which he has published nearly 400 articles in top refereed journals. He coordinates several very large projects within the Framework Programmes of the European Commission, and is currently leading one of the largest public-private partnership programmes in the world to support the development of new drugs against resistant bacteria (the New Drugs for Bad Bugs, ND4BB, Programme). During the ceremony he gave his recipient’s lecture: ‘The modern ICU: are antibiotics used to save the patients or to soothe the minds of the doctors?’

Carolina Garcia-Vidal’s work is proving invaluable in the fields of respiratory tract infections, especially in immunocompromised hosts. Jason Roberts has developed large networks of researchers throughout the world, enabling him to deliver seminal studies of antimicrobial therapy in ICU patients, while Roy Sleator’s work on the characterization and treatment of new and emerging gastrointestinal pathogens has made a significant impact in this field.