Dear Member,
I am taking the liberty of breaking with tradition and sending out a general letter between the usual “membership renewal” letters we send at the end of the year. My excuse is that this is the first even dated year for a long time that we have not had a World Congress which previously allowed us to have a General Meeting of our Society in the years between Hypoxia Symposia.
Next president
The next opportunity for a General Meeting will be at Hypoxia in 2007 (Feb 27-Mar 4). I hope to see many of you there then. One of the items on our agenda will be to elect my successor as President. Our statutes provide for the election of the president by the General Meeting, two years before taking office. This is to give him/her a chance to become familiar with the job before taking office. Strictly speaking the election should be this year but February next year will be the earliest opportunity to do this. I would welcome any of your views or proposals for who should be our next president. Note that the statutes allow the president to serve for one term only.
The ISMM
Since I wrote to you at the end of last year, the Society has recovered from the problems we had in relation to our membership and subscription arrangements. Thanks are due to Bruno Durer, Tom Dietz and Jennifer Mariano. Bruno set up our account in Zurich and the on line payment scheme, Tom did the necessary on the web site and links and Jennifer keeps our data bases up to date. Our current financial situation is satisfactory. The membership is still smaller than I would like to see. The benefit of membership is considerable; we get the splendid journal, High altitude Medicine & Biology (HAM&B) at very favourable rates. Do urge your colleagues with an interest in mountain medicine to join.
Conferences.
Although we have no ISMM sponsored conference this year, there has been plenty of activity with national and international meetings on mountain medicine in which our members have been involved. These, together with education in Mountain Medicine help to further our aims to encourage research and education in this field. As your president I was invited to the Japanese Society of Mt. Med. National conference in Tokyo in May of this year and to an International Workshop on Mt. Med. in Kyrgyzstan in June. I have written a report on this which will appear in our pages of HAM&B in due course. The Workshop was sponsored by NATO (a very good use of their funds I thought) and organised by our member Almaz Aldashev.
ASMM
At the Japanese conference, a meeting was held which proposed the formation of an Asian Society of Mountain Medicine (ASMM) as a regional society. The members who will take this proposal further are: Shigeru Matsuyama, Gi Ri Li, and Buddha Basnyat. Any member interested in this proposed society is invited to get in touch with one of these three. There will be further discussions at Hypoxia 2007 with the hope of an official launch in Scotland later in the year.
Scotland 2007
Finally, let me remind you that the next ISMM sponsored meeting (with the Wilderness Medical Society) is the Mountain & Wilderness Medicine World Congress in Aviemore, Scotland, October 3-7, 2007. Visit www.worldcongress2007.org.uk.
Sincerely, |
