ECCMID 2017 wrap-up

Dear ECCMID 2017 attendees,

This year’s 27th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases ECCMID 2017 has come to a close with record-breaking numbers! As many as 12,494 people from 126 countries attended ECCMID with the top 10 countries of provenance being the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Belgium respectively. The congress featured more than 200 sessions covering the entire field of infectious diseases and clinical microbiology, including 12 keynote lectures, more than 100 symposia and oral sessions, 20 educational workshops and 20 meet-the-expert sessions. It also offered attendees 26 industry-organized symposia and an exhibition with 195 exhibitors. Of the 5,223 regular and late-breaking abstracts received from 106 different countries, 3,393 abstracts were presented in oral, eposter and paper poster sessions. As many as 381 speakers and 188 chairs participated in the congress and about 36% of this total of 569 were women. More than 70 journalists were registered for the congress.

Congress highlights

The highlights of this year’s congress included the keynote speech by Thierry Calandra, the winner of this year’s ESCMID Excellence Award, for his outstanding lifetime achievements in the field of sepsis. The key topics at this year’s congress were antimicrobial resistance with a focus on susceptibility testing, antimicrobial stewardship and infection control and prevention. They were presented in keynote sessions, original research and in workshops. The congress also extensively covered different aspects of the big four in infectious diseases: HIV, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and malaria. Nobel prize winner Françoise Barré-Sinoussi held a keynote about the HIV epidemic, Sir Nicholas White talked about the elimination of malaria and Wenhui Li discussed his discovery of the hepatitis B receptor, while tuberculosis was covered in more than 100 presentations. We had crowd-drawing sessions on emerging infections and novel diagnostic techniques or about the role of microbiota during the keynote by Eric G. Pamer, just to name a few. A record number of 33 late-breaking abstracts accepted for presentation – reported in three dedicated oral sessions on clinical trials, diagnostics and vaccines – attracted many interested delegates.

More information on the ESCMID website, in the eLibrary and in press releases

You may read more about the highlights of the congress in the press releases on the conference website, which will include research on antimicrobial resistance, novel approaches in diagnostics and the treatment of infection-related diseases. Video clips featuring interviews with keynote speakers, session chairs and other speakers on the scientific highlights may also be found on the society’s
ECCMID 2017 channel. Abstracts, presentations and webcasts from this year’s ECCMID are freely available on ECCMID Live until the end of August. ECCMID material is currently being curated to be included in the ESCMID eLibrary, which also hosts material from other ESCMID events. The next ECCMIDs will take place in Madrid from 21 – 24 April 2018 and in Amsterdam from 13 – 16 April 2019.

Safe travels and see you next year!

Best regards, your ESCMID communications editors