January 6, 2007

 

Dear Colleagues and friends,

 

First of all I wish to thank the Executive Council of the Asian Association of Pediatric Surgeons for    unanimously electing me the President of the august body crowned by stalwarts in the past. I also wish to put on record the great contributions   made by my predecessors to the association, recent being Prof Takeshi Miyano from Japan and Dr Anette Jacobsen from Singapore.

The Asian Association of Pediatric surgeons is still a small family. It is different and has to play many roles than the many other associations in the field around the world.

 

Asia has almost one sixth of the world population with over one billion children. The surgical workload with pediatric cancers, congenital malformations, trauma and infections is too much but the resources are meager. Pediatric surgical centers are insufficient and the trained manpower is also less to cope up with the workload. The challenges are similar in almost all countries, except a few.

 

A close interaction to share the experiences, exchange of knowledge and the train the personnel ( medical and par-medical) are still very important. A survey on the prevalence of the common congenital malformations is important and should be undertaken in Asian region also to assess the mortality and the morbidity trends. Better developed centers should provide training to the less privileged ones.

 

Training to the nurses and the technical staff is equally important and we should involve them during all our future academic activities. Seeing the response in the recently concluded 20^th Congress of the AAPS, in New Delhi, the newly constituted Executive Council would be happy to deliberate on the request to hold such meetings more frequently. 

 

I am sure the new Secretary General of our Association Prof Talal Al-Malki, from Saudi Arab, will try his best to raise the members and the funds to promote the cause of pediatric surgery in the coming years. 

 

I wish to send the Warm New Year Greetings to all of you and to your families and hope the new year will be successful in bringing joy and peace around us and help promoting pediatric surgery as a specialty across Asia.

 

Long Live the Association.

 

 

 

 

[Devendra K Gupta]

New Delhi.

President’s Message