Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
Our long-awaited 12th Georg Rajka symposium ran smoothly in Montréal with a superb technical support for the hybrid format, with 323 in-person attendees and 143 virtual attendees.
The live discussions with some distant presenters (intervening sometimes at night-time in their country of origin) was a memorable feature of the meeting. The representation of industry was very strong as well as that of patient organizations, with a half day premeeting chaired by Roberto TAKAOKA and Carolyn JACK where primary care was rightly emphasized as an essential step for the management of our patients in the context of paucity of specialists.
The global outreach of ISAD was confirmed with delegates from 43 nations, with a predictable strong regional representation from Canada and the United States. Interestingly Korea, after the Seoul meeting where COVID prevented in-person foreign participation sent 51 participants.
Access to the full program and abstracts is in open access via the ActaDV website, and the posters will be available soon on our website.
I would like, on behalf of our Society, to thank for their dedication all the members of the local organizing committee led by Danielle MARCOUX and Michele RAMIEN.
In addition to the beautiful colours of Autumn in and around Montréal, the Canadian flavour of this Symposium was everywhere in the scientific program and social events, Cirque du Soleil artists enlightened the Gala evening, where the 2020 and 2022 Rajka medallists Lennart RÖSNER and Aaron DRUCKER were handed their medal by Ms Susanne RAJKA.
We learnt a lot about indigenous populations and the marked severity of AD they suffer, with limited access to health care due to long distance and precarity, with current efforts using telemedicine to improve the situation.
More is to come concerning the opinion of attendees, with a set of interviews given during the meeting and collected by our webmaster, Laurent ELGARD.
Next meeting in Gdańsk
The preparation of our 13th Rajka symposium is already our main objective and Magdalena TRZECIAK is working hard to prepare the program with her Polish colleagues around the motto Solidarity in AD.
A pre-program will be released soon. Please block already the date in your agenda: Aug. 31 to Sept. 2, 2023.
Best regards,
Alain TAÏEB
President ISAD