This World Sepsis Day, raising awareness of sepsis was more important than ever, as the global COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to the global burden and long-term impacts of severe infectious illnesses.
As a result of the pandemic, Action on Sepsis moved its advocacy activities online. Daily, we shared sepsis resources, virtual events, and sepsis survivor stories on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Collectively, our posts were viewed over 25,000 times, marking a successful ‘Sepsis-tember’.
Our newly-established Patient Council led all communication through Facebook, growing our page’s following by 20%! On Facebook, our post on our Smart Discharges Program, which included a video produced with support from CIHR, was viewed 169 times in a single day.
On Twitter, our photo of BC Place being illuminated in pink for World Sepsis Day was viewed over 4,000 times, and led to 136 engagements where individuals shared, liked, or followed the link to learn more about the photo. We also shared resources from our global partners in sepsis advocacy, including short videos from the Global Sepsis Alliance that explain the risks groups for and symptoms of sepsis. These videos were each viewed over 100 times! Lastly, we promoted events hosted by these global partners. This included the inaugural World Sepsis Meeting, the World Sepsis Congress Spotlight, the Sepsis Alliance Summit, and WFPICCS’s and PALISI’s Pediatric Sepsis Research in Limited Resource Settings virtual World Sepsis Day event. Each post we shared promoting these events was viewed, on average, over 600 times, and led to 20 engagements (i.e., likes, shares, or link clicks).
Thank you to all our partners for helping make this year a success. We look forward to next year, when we will hoping be once be able to raising awareness of the global emergency in-person!