Reflections from ECCMID 2015

This year’s ECCMID meeting in Copenhagen was universally accepted to be the first one with a significant infection prevention and control component, although it would be fair so say that the sessions were not the best attended, meaning that levels of interest in infection control in the majority of the infectious disease physicians attending still need to be stimulated. There were a number of significant sessions, one of which entitled ‘The year in infection control’ was a whistle-stop tour through the most significant papers of 2014 as selected by Petra Gastmeier, Eli Perencevich and Stephanie Dancer. This was a rollercoaster of a session. There was, as you would imagine an interest in Chlorhexidine bathing with a very interesting debate between Stephan Harbarth (in favour) and Andreas Voss (against). The main argument against seemed to be that compliance is poor and so why bother? This in fact was a major theme at the meeting, where many papers were presented, in some of which interventions had little effect however the implementation just did not take place. There were a couple of interesting abstracts. Michelle Allen presented the pilot to her very interesting cleaning bundle study that has some positive initial results. The second was a small study from Turkey, unfortunately not an e-poster, that used a Chlorhexidine wipe to cleanse the genital area prior to sending a urine specimen showed impressive results in reducing contaminants and the need for repeat specimens and possibly warrants further investigation in a well-designed study since most micro labs are submerged under the number of inclonclusive urine specimens that result in repeats being requested and possible treatment delays. The third was from Prof Hilary Humphreys group in Dublin, which looked at the use of chlorine on mattress covers contaminated with Carbapenem resistant Klebsiella pneumonia, demonstrating that they survive for longer on mattress fabric and are more resistant to hypochlorite than other carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. Will there be as much attention on IPC at ECCMID 2016 in Istanbul? Watch this space.