In April 2024 ESCMID delegates participated in a joint activity with WHO Europe, WHO national office in Ukraine and CDC on Antimicrobial stewardship in Lviv, Ukraine. For more than a year, experienced European infectious disease and clinical microbiology lecturers have provided weekly online webinars on antimicrobial stewardship (AMS), microbiology and infection prevention and control (IPC) as part of an educational programme for three Ukrainian regions, led by CDC with ICAP at Columbia University (ICAP) as their primary implementing partner.
While these were useful educational moments, there was a clear need for a face-to-face learning programme in Ukraine. Confronted with daily warfare in large parts of the country, Ukrainian healthcare professionals are continuously challenged with very difficult healthcare associated infections, increasingly caused by MDR pathogens. Most Ukrainian medical professionals are not allowed or able to travel abroad for necessary postgraduate educational events like ESCMID Global.
In April 2024, a 5-day intensive course was organised in Lviv, close to the Polish border, by WHO-Ukraine, WHO-Europe, US-CDC and ESCMID. From ESCMID the following 6 experts participated: Jeroen Schouten, Guillaume Beraud, Toke Seierøe Barfod, Agnes and Tibor Pal Sonnevend and Robert Skov. An extensive programme of lectures and practical workshops on antimicrobial prescribing, stewardship, microbiological diagnostics, and infection prevention was executed for representative teams (consisting of microbiologists, clinicians and pharmacologists) from the hospitals taking part in the earlier online webinars.
At the end of the intensive course, all participating centres presented a practical plan for the immediate future on implementing AMS and/or IPC programmes in their own hospitals. ESCMID will continue to support Ukrainian infectious diseases professionals in future courses (online and hopefully onsite), but also by providing easy access to its online course repository.
