Hospital Infection Society

The Hospital Infection Society was founded in 1979 to provide a scientific forum for medical microbiologists interested in various aspects of infection in hospital. Initially the Society was proposed to be a sub-group of a larger society, to be founded as the Society for Clinical Microbiology. However, a subsequent meeting of the steering committee determined that the new association should stand alone from the start as the Hospital Infection Society. Its objective was to promote the study of and facilitate the dissemination of information about all aspects of hospital infection and the importance of holding meetings and of co-operation with other societies was emphasised from the outset. Membership was to consist of medically-qualified microbiologists, with physicians and surgeons or non-medical microbiologists with a PhD or MRCPath and an active interest in hospital infection admissible on the discretion of the Council.

The Society meets several times a year, often in conjunction with other related societies, such as the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (whose archive is also held at the Wellcome Library), the Surgical Infection Study Group and the Infection Control Nurses Association (see Section B). The annual Lowbury Lecture, sponsored from the first by ICI, was named after Professor Edward Lowbury, the Society's first President, an expert in the field. The Society has also organised large three International Conferences on hospital infection (see Section G).

The work of publicising the issue of hospital infection was aided by the establishment of the Journal of Hospital Infection in 1980, which was associated with the Society from the outset and soon became its official publication (see E.1-2). The Society also undertook to carry out research in the field, by means of ad hoc working parties (see F.1) and to use the professional expertise of the membership to advise, comment on and publicise the work of others (see F.2).