The World Health Assembly* has today made sepsis a global health priority by adopting a resolution to improve, prevent, diagnose, and manage sepsis. This marks a huge step forward in the global fight against sepsis.
Adopting sepsis as a global health priority should ensure better training for the relevant health professionals, greater awareness of the signs and symptoms of sepsis to be especially alert for and better adoption of the most effective strategies for preventing and treating sepsis.
You can read the full resolution here.
*The World Health Assembly is the world’s highest health policy setting body, composed of health ministers from member states, and is the forum through which the World Health Organization (WHO) is governed by its 194 member states.
“Worldwide, sepsis is one of the most common deadly diseases, and it is one of the few conditions to strike with equal ferocity in resource-poor areas and in the developed world. In the developed world, sepsis is dramatically increasing by an annual rate of 5-13 per cent over the last decade, and now claims more lives than bowel and breast cancer combined.
When sepsis is quickly recognized and treated, lives are saved but health care providers need better training because they are the critical link to preventing, recognizing, and treating sepsis.”
The adoption of sepsis as a global priority was initiated by the Global Sepsis Alliance who gathered the consensus and authority of clinicians and families from over 70 countries.
“We are very excited by this news today. Group B Strep is the most common cause of severe infection in newborn babies in the UK, including sepsis.
Most group B Strep infections in newborn babies could be and should be prevented and better prevention strategies, coupled with greater awareness and prompt and appropriate treatment will make huge inroads into preventing and reducing the effects of these terrible infections.”
