Don’t forget to make your nominations for the ESCMID Awards to honour the contributions from your colleagues who are pioneering the way in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases. Nominations for the three excellence awards are closing this Thursday, 31 July 2025 and nominations for the early career awards are closing on 18 August 2025. You can see all of the different awards as well as the eligibility criteria for each on our website.

Science and Research

The AMR Quadripartite organisations FAO, UNEP, WHO and WOAH announced the theme for World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW), “Act Now: Protect Our Present, Secure Our Future” taking place 18 - 24 November. ESCMID and the AMR Action Subcommittee are planning an exciting series of webinars on the topic. Read more about last year’s activities and stay tuned for more ESCMID announcements on WAAW 2025.

Education

Looking to elevate your leadership skills? Check out these two standout courses designed to empower and equip leaders at every level: 

• Lead with impact: Fostering collaboration & navigating complexity, 18 - 19 September, Carcavelos, Portugal
  Master the art of leading in today’s fast-paced, complex environments. This course helps you build stronger teams through effective collaboration and teaches strategies to navigate challenges with confidence.
  
• Empowering women in leadership, 29 - 30 October, Carcavelos, Portugal
  This course addresses gendered situations that women face in the workplace and provides tools and resources to empower women in leadership roles while building strong, collaborative teams.

Explore these courses and register before 22 August 2025! 

The landscape of treating drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is evolving rapidly with new drugs and regimens. However, the diagnostic pipeline is struggling to keep pace. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently endorsed targeted Next Generation Sequencing (tNGS) as a molecular tool for obtaining rapid genotypic data to guide clinical management. Understanding its potential and limitations is crucial for effective implementation. Register today for this on-site ESCMID course!

Congress and Events

The 6th Conference on Vaccines is coming up soon in September in Lisbon, Portugal and we are excited to share some of the highlights from members of the programme committee. The overall programme is finalised and you should check it out. There will also be an opportunity to submit late-breaker abstracts in early August so stay tuned!

Sign up today for the 14th International Meeting on Microbial Epidemiological Markers (IMMEM XIV)! Enhance your knowledge and skills on microbial fingerprinting, harnessing these biotools for real world applications like environmental surveillance, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, and more. Session topics range from what's new in bioinformatics and how genomics inform resistance profiling to pathogen surveillance in a One Health framework and wastewater surveillance.

Guidelines and Journals

Hosts Emily McDonald and Thomas Tängdén invite Staffan Tevell (Karlstad, Sweden) and Bernadette Young (Oxford, UK) to weigh in on the pro-con debate of fluoroquinolone (FQ) use, especially for periprosthetic joint infections (PJIs), which can entail longer treatment durations. They review the standard of care for PJIs, including FQs in combination with rifampicin vs other antibiotic combinations, the impact of the OVIVA trial advocating for early oral switch strategies, the long list of rare but important side effects, and how best to preserve FQs for clinical indications that most need them. 

This week, sources report on measles from Canada, Bolivia, Reunion Island and Kyrgyzstan. Seasonal transmission of the West Nile virus confirmed in Greece, Italy and Romania, with the region of Latina, Italy most affected (9 cases). Increasing rabies cases in Timor-Leste & Indonesia including fatalities have triggered the latter country to start a mass vaccination campaign, plus Romania’s first reported local case since 2012. A surge in Clade 2 mpox infections in West Africa, including Ghana's first reported fatal case, has led to travel advisories for Sierra Leone and Liberia. Health officials in USA (Minnesota) reported increasing cases of Tularemia in 2025, affecting both humans and their pets.

Safety and tolerability of Linezolid use in 186 children: A single centre observational study

Rifampicin in staphylococcal implant infections: Precision use or pitfall?