The UK Sepsis Trust is calling for more funds to help raise awareness of the condition Sepsis.
This comes after new NHS Wales figures show the number of cases has increased by eleven percent last year.
They show there were 4000 cases in Wales last year, the highest it’s been for a decade.
Sepsis kills more people each year in the UK than bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined.
The National Institute for Health Care Excellence (NICE), the government agency that advises health staff in England and Wales say Sepsis cases need to be treated urgently.
Terence Canning, the Executive Director of Sepsis Trust Wales says, “It’s very welcome news from NICE that Sepsis is being treated as a tier one illness, like a heart attacks and strokes.
“I started volunteering for the UK Sepsis Trust in 2013, to raise funds and more importantly raise awareness of the condition.
“I wasn’t aware of it until my own brother died in 2012 of Sepsis and he was only 41, married with a three year old daughter. He died of something I had never heard of.”
He says, “The key thing around this is education, you need the public to turn up on time and for the people they speak to first to recognise the condition and know what to do.”
Mr Canning will meet with the Welsh Government Health AM Vaughan Gething next week to discuss the ‘Just Ask’ campaign, which was launched last year to encourage health care professionals to look for symptoms of the condition so they can identify and diagnose it earlier.
