For the early birds, the day kicked off with insightful
"Meet-the-Expert" sessions focusing on surgical infections and urinary tract infections.

The morning plenary session on Update on AMR was presented by Prof Anna Levin (University of Sao Paulo), who has taken IPC and antimicrobial stewardship from ground zero to internationally recognized impact. She delivered a comprehensive overview of the global AMR landscape, highlighting current initiatives and efforts underway to address this pressing issue. She emphasized the urgent need for a unified global response that is fit for purpose in resource-limited settings. In the afternoon, we were treated to a plenary session by Prof Tumani Corrah, a past director of the MRC Unit in the Gambia and the founder of the African Research Excellence Fund. He reflected on the work needed to strengthen research infrastructure and surveyed the research generated from Africa for Africa, which has led to truly global health solutions.

The day was filled with a wide variety of scientific sessions, from cutting-edge research and innovative technologies to real-world applications and best practices, which drew in the audience and sparked engaging discussions. These included HIV-ID meetings from Kenya to South Africa, clinical management of hard-to-treat infections, pediatric infectious diseases, hospital-acquired infections, biomedical interventions on STI prevention, Hepatitis B and C, point-of-care testing, current updates on tuberculosis, and equitable global access to antimicrobials and vaccines.

The day’s oral abstracts offered a platform for researchers and scientists to share their latest findings, insights, and research outcomes on microbes, pathogenesis, host immunity, One health, outbreaks, surveillance, epidemiology, parasitology, and vector-borne infections. The interdisciplinary engagement and interactions at ICID 2024 were amplified by the poster presentation session, facilitating knowledge exchange and stimulating new networks.

Women Raising Women session was conducted in collaboration with WomenLiftHealth. The panelists discussed their experience on engagement in global health, what skills are required for global health. Industry sessions sponsored by Pfizer included an AMR expert round table and respiratory diseases control through mRNA technology.

The early career research grant awardees of the transformative ISID/BMGF grants programme presented their exciting new findings. These ranged from work on schistosomiasis (Cameroon), Salmonella (Benin, West Africa), antibiotic self-medication practices (Malawi), vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (Nigeria), carbapenem resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (Bangladesh), human leptospirosis infections (Tanzania). These are the people to watch in the future, our ISID President-Elect Neelika Malavige was a past grant recipient many years ago!