An inspiring story of desperation and courage and an all-consuming illness
Ilse Malfait presents her book 'Every hour counts' today. It is the breathtaking story of desperation, resilience and an all-consuming disease. Sepsis, popularly known as blood poisoning, is widespread yet unknown and takes the lives of as many as 7,675 people in Belgium every year. Ilse Malfait survived the disease, but experienced a nightmare getting through it. She spent 487 days in hospital, where her two lower legs and her fingers were amputated. But Ilse did not stop at nothing and crawled into her pen. With the book, she wants to draw urgent attention to this many-headed assassin and calls for a national sepsis plan from Sepsibel, the organisation she co-founded.
The story of Every hour counts and Ilse Malfait starts with breast cancer, another terrible disease that strikes Ilse in May 2020. After an initial treatment with chemo, hellish pains follow and Ilse ends up in intensive care. And that's where hell really begins. She is in a life-threatening condition for weeks and is kept in a coma for a long time. Her lower legs and fingers turn pitch black as they die and are amputated. She spends as many as 487 days in hospital and undergoes 22 operations.
"In the end, I came through, thanks to the excellent care of the medical team at UZ Ghent. But it should never have come this far. In the first hospital I ended up in, action was too slow. The symptoms were recognised and treated too late, with dramatic consequences," says Ilse Malfait.
Urgent call for national Sepsis plan
"There is a deafening silence around sepsis in Belgium. No awareness, no data, and especially no guidelines in many hospitals to detect critical patients quickly. I want to change this with my book. The government must act now and implement a national sepsis plan," Ilse continues.
At least one Belgian dies needlessly from sepsis every day. According to Sciensano, prevention and early recognition can avoid a significant proportion of bloodstream infections, which underlie most sepsis cases.
The World Health Organisation, through a resolution in 2017, urged governments to develop such a national plan around sepsis. Several European countries including Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK responded.
"An effective approach to sepsis requires the introduction of a national plan with lines of force regarding prevention; data registration; guidelines for early diagnosis and treatment; awareness both among healthcare workers and the general public; ongoing training for healthcare workers; aftercare and patient support; research and evaluation," says Professor Erika Vlieghe, infectiologist at the UZA and UA, who called for
A national sepsis plan.
"We urgently need to bring sepsis out of the shadows," says Professor Jan De Waele, president of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (2024-26) and intensivist in the UZ Gent IZ team that saved Ilse's life. "Prevention, early recognition and prompt treatment of sepsis are essential to save lives and prevent permanent damage ranging from concentration problems, brain damage, to limb amputations."
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