Infectious diseases
Infectious diseases - Description
Description
Infectious Diseases is the clinical speciality that covers all aspects of infectious diseases: diagnosis, treatment, screening and prevention.
As well as infections that develop "spontaneously" (pneumonia, urinary tract infections, gastroenteritis, etc.), Infectious Diseases specialists are also responsible for dealing with hospital-acquired infections (post-operative infections, infections with multi-resistant pathogens, etc.).
In the past Infectious Diseases was considered rather a luxury as a specialty, and was only available in university hospital centres (which had sufficiently large numbers of junior doctors) and in pioneering clinics where the leadership had understood the value of having a specialist in infectious diseases to optimise patient management. The management of the Edith Cavell Medical Institute therefore asked me to take on this role in 1997. In 2008 a Royal Decree made it compulsory to have an Infectious Diseases specialist in every acute hospital in Belgium (and they receive a small amount of funding for this).