EUPSA

Newsletter 12/2007

Dear EUPSA members,

More than half a year elapsed since I took office as you new president and I acknowledge that it is difficult to follow the pace set by my predecessor Andrew Pinter in terms of Newsletters and worldwide information.

In my opinion, and I am sure that most of you share it, the Torino meeting was a spectacular success. Very good venue, excellent scientific contents, exciting social program and a large attendance made our congress even better than the former ones. This is one of our main aims and therefore we have to be very satisfied with it. Ferdinando Canavese and all his local people were largely responsible for this success and should be warmly congratulated.

Some of our problems were not fully solved and particularly that of the less than perfect website. In spite of the much time and effort devoted by our webmaster, Paul Broens, the site is not yet able to cope with all the tasks that we foresaw for it. The complex structure of our database for membership and congress administration created a lot of problems which could not be solved by neither of the to companies involved in this business. We are building a new structure and reorganising our administration to serve better our growing organisation.

The Istanbul meeting is approaching and I am sure that the local team presided by Cenk Büyükünal will perform as efficiently as they usually do (I attended several meetings there and they were always perfect). The venue is spectacular and the growing attendance and prestige of our association will certainly bring a lot of people to Turkey. You still have time to submit abstracts until mid January!.

2007 was also marked by the massive presence of EUPSA members at the World Congress of Paediatric Surgery in Buenos Aires. This meeting was another sparkling success with more than 1500 attendants (950 from the Americas but the remaining 550 from all around the world). Many people there were interested in our association and I hope that this will bring more members to EUPSA (we are already more than 1000). During the meeting, the first in which the EUPSA participated as an association, Prem Puri was elected as the new President and the Executive was constituted as follows:

The Executive Board of the EUPSA will meet shortly in Graz (January 12-13, 2008) and we will keep you informed of any new interesting developments.

Best wishes, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Juan A. Tovar
President of EUPSA
Jürgen Schleef
Secretary of EUPSA