MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING
FOR ACADEMIC COOPERATION (NETWORK)
In 2012 a group of enthusiastic intensivists launched an initiative called SepsEast, to bring Eastern European opinion leaders and Western European experts together and also sharing up to date knowledge in the community.
The idea was welcomed by several societies and conferences were organized regularly and biannually in Budapest, Hungary. The reason for starting this initiative in Central and Eastern Europe was the recognition of the importance of the shared legacy that we brought from the former Soviet-block, which lead to similar problems in each country. Namely, intensive care in this region of Europe became severely underfunded, understaffed with very poor research activity as compared to our Western counterparts.
Things have improved over the last 10-15 years to some extent, but our research output is still decades behind the rest of the developed world. Furthermore, the very recent results of the SepsEast collaboration revealed that during the COVID-19 pandemic mortality on the intensive care units and especially of those receiving mechanical ventilation was substantially worse than that of published from Western Europe [Benes J et al, Sci Rep, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18991-2].
The idea was welcomed by several societies and conferences were organized regularly and biannually in Budapest, Hungary. The reason for starting this initiative in Central and Eastern Europe was the recognition of the importance of the shared legacy that we brought from the former Soviet-block, which lead to similar problems in each country. Namely, intensive care in this region of Europe became severely underfunded, understaffed with very poor research activity as compared to our Western counterparts.
Things have improved over the last 10-15 years to some extent, but our research output is still decades behind the rest of the developed world. Furthermore, the very recent results of the SepsEast collaboration revealed that during the COVID-19 pandemic mortality on the intensive care units and especially of those receiving mechanical ventilation was substantially worse than that of published from Western Europe [Benes J et al, Sci Rep, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18991-2].
Therefore, we believe that there is a need for formal collaboration in the future mainly in our scientific and training activities. To foster the recognition of our efforts and to produce tangible results we propose this Memorandum of Understanding between the Signatory Institutes for Academic Cooperation.
BRIDGING THE EAST TO THE WEST
SepsEast Community is a voluntary initiative of Central and Eastern European intensivists to bring East and West closer to each other for a better ICU care.