The work ‘Dissemination of multiresistant Enterobacterales in long-term health care units’ presented by Catarina Marques, PhD student at ciTechCare, at the 5th International Congress ‘Infection Associated with Health Care’, was distinguished with the best oral communication award.  

The 5th International Congress IACS, which took place from october 25 to 27, was organized by the School of Health of the Portuguese Red Cross North (ESSNorteCVP) and the Entre Douro e Vouga Hospital Center (CHEDV), and was specially addressed to hospital health professionals, such as doctors, nurses, diagnostic and therapeutic technicians, pharmacists, among others.  

The awarded work resulted from the doctorate research project that is being conducted under the guidance of researcher Sónia Gonçalves Pereira and allowed a better understanding of the ecology of dissemination of the pathogens analyzed, which were detected in both clinical and environmental samples, in the context of long-term care units, which fosters the need to promote adequate infection prevention and control programs in these places.  

Besides Sónia Gonçalves Pereira and Catarina Marques, this work also had the collaboration of Helena Ferreira, Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Porto, Camila Teixeira, Master fellow at ciTechCare and both the Professors Wolfram Manuel Brück and Douglas Teodoro, from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, a partner institution of ciTechCare. 

According to Fernanda Príncipe, President of this edition, the goal of this event was to “discuss, analyze, learn and train on topics of utmost importance, such as microbial resistance, device-associated infections, wounds, artificial intelligence, infection transmission routes, advanced research methods in hospital epidemiology, clinical trials, the impact of post-pandemic health and strategic policies to improve infection prevention and control”.