Dr. Orla Healy:

I was going to make the same point. I cannot help myself because my background is public health. It is the prevention element. There is a huge prevention element that people should take the vaccines that are available to them to prevent infections. They should observe hand hygiene to stop the spread of infections and observe respiratory etiquette. That has been drilled into us during Covid but it is very important in the healthcare setting as well. Then there is there is the early detection part and then the bit about antimicrobial resistance. There is no point treating a viral illness with an antibiotic for a bacterial infection, yet there are certain bacterial infections that critically require treatment with antibiotics. If you overuse antibiotics then you breed that resistance. If you suffer from an infection caused by one of those resistant organisms, then you are at risk of sepsis and we have less in our armoury to treat because we are breeding that resistance as well. That is what we mean about the complexity of the message. One of the critical messages to get across is that it is about having the right treatment when you need it and if you are not getting better on an existing treatment, then the awareness is there that if you are not getting better, to consider that it might be something like sepsis.