Opening speech for the seventh International Day for Fighting Infection, at the pre-seminar for the annual meeting of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID)

Friends, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to UN City, where we are happy to host this collaborative symposium to mark the seventh International Day for Fighting Infection and to dedicate some time to considering how we can learn from the past and the remarkable achievements of humankind and science in combating diseases for the future.

As many of you are aware, a very special week is drawing to a close today. This has been the tenth European Immunization Week, a week when all 53 of our Member States in the European Region take the opportunity to focus their immunization efforts under what has become one of the most highly visible slogans in the Region: "Prevent. Protect. Immunize."

What could be a better topic than learning from the past to shape a better future? In terms of immunization, when we look back over the last 50 years there is much we can learn. We see smallpox: a deadly disease no one ever thought could be overcome, and yet it has been eliminated. We see the fight against polio that we are so close to winning and the value of the polio legacy in helping us shape our joint response to other vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles and rubella. We see safe reliable vaccines available across the Region, offering every generation protection against a larger number of diseases than ever before. I am also confident that the new European Vaccines Action Plan, which sets the course for the coming five years, will successfully drive us further still towards curbing and eliminating diseases.

While they do not diminish the many challenges we face in our fight against infection, the lessons learned from our past give us some powerful weapons in our armoury. And one of the most powerful aspects of those weapons is our capacity to collaborate. As you will hear over the course of this afternoon, the collaborative spirit – the strategic partnership and joint course of action – is the one consistent element that has enabled us to make such phenomenal in-roads in public health and in tackling public health threats. Today is in itself a manifestation of collaboration between WHO and ESCMID. Another example is the CAESAR initiative – the Central Asian and Eastern European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance. This was a result of ESCMID, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and RIVM (the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) in the Netherlands joining forces and expertise to support countries in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

I am very pleased to see that the future is firmly on the agenda today, as we turn our attention to protecting future generations from antimicrobial resistance, using research and innovation to prevent and control drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis and taking an inside look at the clinical management of the deadly Ebola virus. Before we start, I would like to give the floor to ESCMID President, Professor Murat Akova, and wish him a very successful 25th ECCMID [European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases] starting tomorrow at Bella Center in Copenhagen.
I wish you all a productive and inspirational day.