A Message from Our Newly Inaugurated ISTM President, Prativa Pandey
The 9th Conference of the International Society of Travel Medicine in Lisbon was a resounding success with a record number of attendees and an extremely high caliber of presentations. During the meeting of the membership, Bradley Connor handed the presidency of the society over to me. Brad has done an outstanding job the past two years, resolving a lot of business issues that will make it much easier to plan ISTM activities in the future. The stature of the ISTM grew over the past two years, and I take over at a very positive time thanks to his hard work. I feel very privileged to be in this position and look forward to serving the Society in the next two years.
I would also like to acknowledge the tireless efforts of Frank Von Sonnenburg who served as secretary/treasurer these past eight years. Though his work will be difficult to replace, we are extremely fortunate that David Freedman has taken up the task, and should make the transition as seamless as possible.
The ISTM has grown from 287 members in 1991 to 1816 members representing 72 countries in 2005. The need for travel medicine will continue to grow as more people travel for an increasing number of reasons. I believe we need to address the problems faced not only by the traditional holiday and business traveler, but by a broad range of travelers who cross international borders for education, research, visiting friends and relatives, seeking jobs, or to escape war - as is happening in my own country of Nepal in the past few years. As we expand our field, the scope of what we do will also get broader, enabling us to more naturally include elements of post-travel illness in the traditional pre-travel focus of ISTM conferences.
In the next two years, the educational focus of ISTM will see continued growth. Efforts will be made to hold continuing medical education (CME) courses and also to have a pre-examination course. The certificate of knowledge examination in travel health (CTH) will continue to be given every 2 years while we explore possibilities for giving the examination more often, or even via the web.
The world body of knowledge on travel medicine resides within the members and leadership of the ISTM. However, the society has not played a major role internationally in helping to establish guidelines and give advice when needed. One way of moving more in this direction will be by publishing travel medicine guidelines representing the best possible evidence-based opinions on key travel medicine topics. This is a complicated task that has to take into account national and regional differences in practice styles and opinions, but the effort to arrive at key opinions, and define international differences, will be worthwhile.
To stimulate research in travel medicine, research grants will be awarded every year. This reflects a change from the previous practice of once every 2 years, during each CISTM. The GeoSentinel surveillance network continues to play an increasingly valuable role in monitoring disease trends and outbreaks associated with travelers.
Several countries or regions have national or regional societies of travel medicine and ISTM will continue to reach out to these societies to forge common links and build relationships. Efforts will also be made to reach out to developing countries to enhance the membership base and to make ISTM more relevant to practitioners in these countries. The Journal of Travel Medicine will continue to reach more libraries around the world through our new publisher. The new publisher, Blackwell Publishing, takes over in January 2006.
We will continue to develop and foster relationships with international organizations like the World Health Organization and offer the services of the ISTM in areas where we have expertise. Relationships with the travel industry and the traveling public also need to be developed and nurtured.
I am fortunate to be working with a highly talented and dedicated group of people on the Executive Board and committees of the Society. Ideas and suggestions from ISTM members scattered around the globe have helped tremendously in these tasks in the past. We need to continue to build on this. Please communicate your ideas and suggestions to me. I'll always be glad to hear from you. My email address is: pandey@mos.com.np.
With warm regards,
Prativa
