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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2005
Despite the terrible apocalyptic events in Asia, all of us in the Council of the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology hope you have had a good start to the New Year, and that 2005 will prove to be successful and rewarding.
As in previous years, we are using this Newsletter to bring you up to date regarding the general affairs of the Association following the meeting of Council held in Budapest in January. It is our belief, and aspiration, that the Association should really matter to all who read this message, including those paediatric cardiologists, surgeons, and related specialists who are not yet members!
The European Union has now grown by the addition of 10 new member countries, and will continue to grow in the very near future. More than ever, there is a very strong need to provide similar levels of education, equivalent standards of professional training, and common continuous education in the fields of our daily activity. Harmonisation is now mandatory, not just for today, but even more for the future. It is our intention as representatives of the Association, therefore, to become even more active, contributing to the full recognition of the needs of our profession all over the world, and most particularly in Brussels for European affairs. The Association for European Paediatric Cardiology represents Paediatric Cardiology in Brussels at the Union of European Medical Specialists. Although our Association remains the only professional and well-structured society for Paediatric Cardiology existing world-wide, it has not yet become recognised by the political bodies in all our member countries in Europe, and obviously lacks direct political influence elsewhere around the world. Because of this, we need the constant support of members so as to influence events in their own countries, hopefully working with government and through the existing political societies.
So as to maintain our efforts as a Council to work in your interest, we need your contributions, your help, your new ideas, and also the financial support provided by the annual dues, ideally paid regularly, by those who are members of the Association! We also encourage all our members to convince their colleagues who might not yet be members of the Association to join. New instructions and forms for application will soon become available on our restructured website. We hope that the site will be functioning after annual business meeting scheduled for Copenhagen in May.
The annual meeting for 2005 will be held in Copenhagen from 18th through 21st May. As we explained in our February newsletter, Joes Ramsoe Jacobsen, together with Shakeel Qureshi and our professional international congress organisers, has prepared an interesting programme for you all. We owe them our thanks and our respect for the efforts they have invested to provide a rewarding meeting. We certainly count on seeing you there in great numbers. The Council encourages you also to bring many junior colleagues and friends to this meeting. Come and enjoy an active scientific exchange, see your friends, exchange ideas, thoughts and knowledge, but also spend some enjoyable hours together with colleagues.
We will be awarding prizes for the best posters of the meeting. These will be adjudicated in time to announce the winners during the social event scheduled for Friday evening. Two of the prizes will be especially dedicated to those junior fellows who are less than 38 years old. We look forward to viewing many attractive posters with an important scientific content. The abstracts accepted for poster presentation will be considered for prizes by a panel of judges. The winners will be informed in advance of the awards ceremony, and tickets will be reserved for them so they can attend the star social event in Tivoli, and receive their prizes.
In the meantime, we hope that you are all aware of the schedule for the meeting. Registration forms are available on the Internet for electronic registration. No abstract will be published if the first author has not registered for the meeting. Should you need more information or help while registering, please consult our website, or else contact the professional congress organiser in Copenhagen (Telephone: +45 7023 7823; Fax: +45 7023 7888; E-mail: aepc2005@ics.dk).
The training course, shown to have been very successful in former annual meetings, has been organised this year by our working group concerned with Genetic and Basic Sciences. It will take place on Wednesday, 18th May. This course will be free for all our junior members in training. The course will also be open and accessible to all other members on payment of a registration fee of 80 euros.
All our working groups will again organise special sessions within the annual meeting, hoping to provide all attendees with interesting and important scientific and practical data. These sessions, along with the teaching course, were very much appreciated in Munich, and in previous meetings. Because of this, Council has opted to maintain this form of participation by the working groups in the annual meeting. So as to accommodate all the programs from the different groups, however, and in order to provide sufficient time for the abstracts sessions, it has been necessary to continue to have some sessions running in parallel.
Junior members, along with any juniors who would like to become members of the Association, should get in contact with Heynric Grotenhuis and his colleagues, who have organised a meeting specifically for them on Thursday evening. Details are again available on the website of the Association (www.aepc.org)
Important political and professional issues will be discussed at the Annual Business Meeting, which will be held on Saturday, 21st May. We will be presenting our suggestion for the new constitution, which we believe to be more easily accessible, but we need the endorsement of the membership to make this valid. We will also present revised training requirements for paediatric cardiology, and recommendations for training in paediatric echocardiography.
In order to maintain regular contact, it is crucial that we know your address.
Some of the addresses, and especially e-mails, change regularly. Please make sure that any changes are communicated to the Secretary-General. We can keep you supplied with new information only if we know your correct address. Surface mailing has become extremely costly and unreliable, and is also very labour intensive. Because of this, we would like to use e-mail addresses for all future regular communications.
The Council is proud shortly to be unveiling its newly designed website, which hopefully will be user-friendly. All important information will be found on the pages of this site. We have invited all our working groups to define and design their own proper web pages. The Webmaster will be including all this information in an appropriately structured way. Members of the working groups will be issued with passwords for access to protected pages.
In keeping with the wishes of the membership, “Cardiology in the Young” has now become the official journal of the Association. In order to cover the costs, Council found it necessary to increase the annual membership fee. The new combined membership fee will cover all annual dues of the Society, the subscription to the six regular issues and all supplements of “Cardiology in the Young”, and membership of one working group. The treasurer has a difficult task these days, so please help him by paying the annual fees in euros before April 30th. Members should now have received an invoice, which should be paid to the account UBS No. 240-210449.70V.
All members should also, by now, have received their first issue of “Cardiology in the Young”, along with the supplement containing selected highlights of “Heart Week in Florida” for 2004. If you have not paid your dues in 2004, however, or if you were in arrears prior to then, you will not continue to receive the journal. Please pay now, today, and not tomorrow! And those who might be in arrears should note that they are also required to pay any outstanding dues. If the new constitution is accepted, then the Association will, in the future, have only ordinary, junior, senior, and honorary members. Dues have been set at 150 euros for ordinary members, 80 euros for junior members, and 80 euros for senior and honorary members if they want to receive the journal and be in communication through surface mail.
As emphasised above, the annual membership fee for one working group has been included in the annual membership fee. All members should have chosen the working group of their choice. If members wish to belong to more than one working group, then this should be communicated to the group, and an additional fee of 20 euros will be payable. This money should allow the working groups to invite one or two speakers who are not members of the Association to join our Annual Meeting in order to provide inside views of their special research field. The financial situation of the Association sadly does not permit the Council to invite speakers on behalf of the Working Groups. It was, and still is, the task of each Working Group to provide continuous education to their members and the Society, and to find the financial resources needed for this. A small society needs the strong input and help of all its members in order to fulfil its duties.
We list below all those who have applied to join the Association. Any members who wish to comment on the list should make contact with the Secretary-General before the end of April. The Council has seen and approved all these applications, and proposes the election of these colleagues as Junior or Ordinary members, respectively.
Daniela Baumgartner Austria
Evelyn Lechner Austria
Wim Decaluwe Belgium
Talvikki Boldt Finland
Anita Kaarina Hiipala Finland
Olli Martti Pitkänen Finland
Bettina Borm France
Jean-Paul Lethor France
Philipp Beerbaum Germany
Felix Berger Germany
R. Grabitz Germany
Joerg Hambsch Germany
Liane Kändler Germany
Sigrun Karsten Germany
Andreas Koch Germany
Rainer Kozlik-Feldmann Germany
Martin Lehn Germany
Reinald Andreas Motz Germany
Dietmar Schranz Germany
Frank Uhlemann Germany
Dimitrios Nikolaos Soukias Greece
Christof Rose Luxembourg
Magdalena van Osch-Gevers Netherlands
Hanna Batalia Poland
Malgorzata Pawelec-Wojtalik Poland
Lidia Ziolkowska Poland
Milad El-Segaier Sweden
Dieter Bolz Switzerland
Ertürk Resit Levent Turkey
Arif Ruhi Ozyürek Turkey
Ercan Tutar Turkey
Ralf Joachim Holzer United Kingdom
Frank-Thomas Riede Germany
Annette Wacker Germany
Elena Synzeva Russia
Yvan Mivelaz Switzerland
Semira Mehralizadeh Iran
Gary Douglas Webb United States of America
The working group for imaging has provided the Council with recommendations for training in paediatric echocardiography. These proposals will shortly be circulated, and a vote to adopt them will be taken at the Annual Business Meeting. If approved, the recommendations will be published in “Cardiology in the Young”. Recommendations for training in magnetic resonance imaging are in preparation.
The Council hopes that other working groups will follow with recommendations for training in the field of their special interest.
Courses and symposiums organised by members of the association that involve international participation can now be evaluated and approved by the European Board of Accreditation http://www.ebac-cme.org/newsite/index.php. Such quality control is becoming more and more important, not only for personal recognition, but also for recognition and accreditation of the centres organising continuous education. The instructions regarding application can be found through a link on our website (www.aepc.org), or directly through the web address shown above. Our Association is represented on the board of accreditation.
In closing, we invite you again to join us at the Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, sharing your proposals, ideas, and wishes with all the members of the Council.
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