The fifth edition of the ESWI Young Scientist Best Body Of Work award goes to Dr. Robert de Vries, Utrecht University, The Netherlands for his substantial accomplishments to date in the field of understanding influenza virus dynamics.

The first edition of the ESWI Young Scientist Innovative Award, a research grant supported by Seqirus, goes to Dr. Kirsty Short, University of Queensland, Australia, for her innovative research in vaccine development.

Both Dr. de Vries and Dr. Short will receive an invitation to give a keynote lecture during the Young Scientists Plenary session at the 7th ESWI Influenza Conference in Valencia, Spain (13-16 September).

Stimulating the careers of promising researchers being one of ESWI’s objectives, several applicants have been invited to co-chair a scientific session at the 2020 Valencia  Conference.

The question of flu vaccination for healthcare professionals is an urgent and highly relevant one. After all, the devastating impact of flu is widely recognized, and flu vaccines are estimated to prevent thousands of admissions and millions of illnesses with current usage. At risk groups are well defined. Health care professionals work with the patients at risk on a daily basis. Annual vaccination is widely recommended to reduce the risk of healthcare acquired influenza. Why then is it so difficult to achieve influenza vaccine uptake levels in healthcare workers that would reduce or eliminate the risk of transmitting the disease?

In its 2019 Science Policy Influenza Summit, ESWI will attempt to answer that question in close collaboration
with its partner organizations. Together, we aim to develop a list of actions to stimulate the implementation of vaccination policies for health care professionals.

The meeting will be held in Marseille, France, on 20 November 2019, at the occasion of the 12th European Public Health Conference. For more information, click here.

On 28 September 2018, ESWI brought together 60 influenza stakeholders for a day of presentations and debates on paediatric influenza vaccination. The aim of the meeting was to bring childhood influenza vaccination to the next level and to that end ESWI organized a stakeholders table for partner organizations, combined with a number of scientific contributions, Q&A and debate. The event was available via live stream video, reaching 590 viewers worldwide, many of whom weighed in on the discussions via Twitter and e-mail.

The report of the lectures and the discussions held at the Summit can now be downloaded here.