Environmentally Sustainable Society

Over the past 5 years BIA have made active choices to become a more environmentally sustainable society and added our voices to calls to address the climate crisis. As infection professionals we are all too aware of the impact that an increase in global temperatures will have on the epidemiology of infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance.

Sustainability in Infection Webinar

We are privileged as infection specialists to work from the bench to bedside, to work with colleagues in primary care and across the hospital and influence global issues including antimicrobial resistance and infection prevention control. This means that our remit and potential to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare is far reaching. With this in mind in 2022 we organised a Sustainability in Infection webinar to highlight a 360 approach to sustainability from the laboratory to the bedside. This webinar has presentations from a range of speakers, has lots of useful tips and provides a starting point if you are not sure where to start. The webinar includes sessions on antibiotic use, antibiotic contamination of waterways, PPE, single use items in surgical theatres and laboratory processes.

Collaboration with Professional Infection Societies

We have been meeting regularly with the other Professional infection societies, Hospital Infection Society, Infection Prevention Control and Association for Laboratory Medicine to discuss how we can work in collaboration. We are keen to avoid duplication and maximise our resources to have impact meaningful impact. As a group we recognise that there are several initiatives already available such as sustainable laboratory accreditation schemes, and the training and forums provided by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. Creating change on the ground however seemed to be much more challenging therefore we agreed to focus our support on the Intensive Care Society’s Gloves Off campaign and are encouraging as many of our members to join this initiative. ICS provide a step-to-step guide on how to implement this initiative and provide a tried and tested audit tool and educational material. We look forward to hearing more this work from the founder of this campaign Dr Sam Clark at our Autumn Trainees day.

Harriet Hughes (Honorary Secretary) and I have been representing BIA on the Royal College of Physicians sustainability advisory group. As part of this group we have contributed to RCPs Green Physician Toolkit. We also attended the highly informative RCPath Greener labs meeting.

Federation of Infection Societies Conference

Together with the Microbiology Society and HIS we have focussed on how to make the Federation of Infection Societies meeting more sustainable. Last year we managed a meat free day and will do the same again this year. We have moved away from physical delegate bags and ‘disposable’ laynards. 

At FIS this year we have two sessions dedicated to sustainability. On day 1 we will be kicking off with a workshop to develop a toolkit to improve sustainability of infection and control practices. On day 2 we have a brand new session 'Dragons Den'; during which industry leaders will be pitching their stratgies to decarbonise healthcare.

BIA Council Sustainability Post

Our biggest achievement to date, perhaps, is the creation of a new Sustainability post within the BIA council. This post was voted in at our Annual General Meeting in May 2024 and will go out to formal election in May 2025. In the meantime, we co-opted an interim member through an open call for expressions of interests. We had several applications and are please to be able to announce that Dr Luke Hunt, Specialist registrar in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in Sheffield, has accepted the role. Luke already has a lot of experience in this area and will be showcasing his work on decarbonising infection control at the Autumn Trainees day. Luke’s first task is to put together a BIA strategy to lower the footprint of our organisation and we hope to publish this before the end of this year. We recognise we have a lot to do from reducing food waste at our meetings to greener investments but are committed to making the changes that are needed.