This episode is an introduction to the ID:IOTs and British Society of Medical Mycology (BSMM) series of podcasts on fungal infection.

About the BSMM

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The British Society for Medical Mycology (BSMM) aims to bring together clinicians and academic researchers in the field of medical mycology.

The society supports numerous conferences (e.g. fungal session at FIS), publishes national guidelines and holds an annual 3 day conference, which is a real mix of clinical and academic research and presentations. BSMM 2025 with be the 59th meeting and is set to take place in Norwich in on 7th-9th September.

BSMM membership is only £30 per year and benefits include reduced conference fees and access to travel grants and other funding.

Check out the website at www.bsmm.org

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The WHY of this series

The impact of fungal disease on human health is huge yet medical mycology is often under-represented in infection training.

This series of podcasts aims to cover a broad range of topics relating to medical mycology and highlight additional resources should you wish to dive deeper into the fascinating fungal world!

Global burden of fungal disease

Mortality and morbidity

• represent an important and growing cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide.
• estimated to cause over 6 million cases of severe infection globally each year and over 2.5 million deaths (Denning et al. Lancet ID 2024).
• Mortality is rising - a review in 2012 estimated the annual death toll to be 1.5 million (Brown et al. Sci Tran Med 2012).
• Fungi are opportunistic pathogens - this rise in mortality is likely due to the increasing number of patients at risk of serious fungal disease, due to advances in medical therapies - HSCT, SOT, chemotherapies, biologics etc etc

To put this burden of mortality into perspective, these are data from the WHO 2022 reports for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis:

• HIV – 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2022 – 630,000 deaths
• Malaria – 249 million cases globally 2022 – 608,000 deaths
• TB – 10.6 million cases globally 2022 – 1.3 million deaths