Swiss Sepsis Declaration 2025: United against sepsis
Our commitment and plan to make a difference
Sepsis is a medical emergency and poses a major health risk in Switzerland, with a number of cases each year akin to heart attacks or strokes. This life-threatening reaction to an infection is often underestimated, discovered too late, or not treated properly. Nowadays, however, sepsis is easier to detect and can be treated in a more targeted way, dramatically increasing the chances of success. Every single one of us can help raise awareness and catch sepsis early to prevent serious consequences. We, the undersigned, advocate both privately and professionally as part of the Swiss Sepsis Program (SSP) to ensure that the opportunities for improving the situation are better known and more widely utilised.
Recently signed by
Average life expectancy in Switzerland is higher than ever before. And our knowledge about health is more comprehensive than ever before. Nevertheless, sepsis is still far too little known and often underestimated in Switzerland.
A danger that is still too little known
Sepsis occurs when the body’s response to guard against infection (usually caused by bacteria or a virus) goes out of control. If sepsis is not caught and treated quickly, it can lead to septic shock, organ failure requiring intensive care, or even death. Many survivors of sepsis continue to suffer its physical and mental after-effects for years. There is still far too little awareness of these facts. Sepsis is a time-critical medical emergency. It requires immediate medical attention, just like a stroke or heart attack.
Case numbers continue to cause alarm
Sepsis can affect any one of us at any time, regardless of our age or gender. The same goes for our closest loved ones, children, parents, partners, friends and colleagues. Older people, babies and people with chronic illnesses or weakened immune systems are particularly at risk.
In Switzerland, an average of one person falls ill with sepsis every 25 minutes, with drastic consequences for health and life. A person dies of sepsis in this country approximately every 2.5 hours. These figures have not fallen in recent years. They correspond to around 20,000 sepsis cases and around 4,000 sepsis deaths per year throughout Switzerland. By way of comparison, the number of cases of heart attacks is around 19,000 per year and around 22,000 for strokes. In Switzerland, the number of people dying from sepsis each year is comparable to the number dying from bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined.
If that is not enough cause for alarm, the real figures may be much higher. Many cases are not recognised as sepsis or are not recorded as such. Illnesses treated outside of hospital often do not make their way into the statistics.
Annual costs totalling a billion francs
The 20,000 cases of sepsis result in direct treatment costs of over one billion Swiss francs per year in Swiss hospitals. In addition, there are further costs due to follow-up care, rehabilitation, readmissions and long-term consequences, as well as the burden of lost working hours, reduced quality of life and premature deaths. The total cost of sepsis for Switzerland is therefore likely to be in the region of several billion francs per year.
The path to progress has been paved
The Swiss Sepsis National Action Plan (SSNAP) was agreed by authorities and experts in 2022. To help implement the Action Plan, the Eidgenössische Qualitätskommission (EQK) launched the Swiss Sepsis Program (SSP) for the 2023–2028 period and entrusted experts from three leading Swiss hospitals with leadership and coordination. This national programme campaigns for more awareness, training, early detection and treatment in Switzerland.
Personal and shared commitment
In the years to come, we will endeavour to raise awareness of sepsis, both personally and in our professional and private lives, therefore doing our bit to help limit the impact of sepsis on patients and families. We hereby declare that
- we will raise awareness of sepsis when it comes to people’s health and lives – as greater awareness is needed of the risk of sepsis and options to prevent and effectively treat it.
- we will point out the risk of sepsis at an early stage if unusual symptoms occur with infections – as sepsis is always a medical emergency and must be quickly detected and treated as such.
- we will take the necessary precautions in our professional lives to ensure sepsis is caught and treated earlier and more effectively in future – as protection against sepsis is better the more we know about it and advocate on this issue.
We will support these measures everywhere and in a way that is possible for each and every single one of us. We are also prepared to advocate for further support in our professional and personal lives, as well as in the public sphere.
By doing so, we aim to do our bit for the prevention, swifter detection and treatment of sepsis.
