ECCMID 2014, Barcelona

The organization and the city
- It is smooth as usual. You come, scan your voucher, you get your badge and yo go to get your program book.
- E-poster computers are more abundant than last year in Berlin.
- The congress center is easily reachable by metro.
- Bad thing still: lack of food.



The sessions
- So many good things, so many to see. Unlike the congresses in my field before, ECCMID has a lot of overview and experts sessions than scientific sessions. This is really practical for practician in medical microbiology and ID.
- New 'hot' stuff: MERS, new antibiotics against carbapenemases producing Gram negative bugs, for example: avibactam.
- It is still there: more and more CPE and less and less about MRSA.
- Still attracting a big crowds: all sessions on MALDI. Yet, to be honest, none of them really new: it is a revolution, we are still discovering how to use it for epidemiology, for susceptibility testing and
- Interesting to follow: sessions on automated laboratories.
- Interesting about education: according to Union of European Medical Specialists, the medical microbiologists should be a doctor. It does make sense.
- The jury is not out yet: mono- vs. combination therapy in MDR bugs. Personally I believe the problem of the 'negative studies' why combo's not better than mono is the regression

- A bit worrying: some research on double carbapenems to treat CPE. By doing this, we are selecting more and more resistant bugs. I can understand some countries are facing CPE problems more than the others but the solution is not using more and newer antibiotics but health organization, surveillance and prudent antibiotic use. It sounds a bit crazay, may be an embargo should pe imposed for 5 years after the release of new antibiotics for the country with high CPE problem?

Where to find the talks
 https://www.escmid.org/escmid_library/online_lecture_library/search=1&current_page=1&search_term=&entrytitle[]=7889&media[]=5

For myself
Thank you ECCMID for giving me the TAE award this time.