Dear colleagues
Welcome to the first newsletter of the EUGMS 6th Congress to be held in Dublin from 29 Sept -1 Oct 2010. Building on the success of previous congresses, this promises to be the biggest scientific meeting dedicated to geriatric medicine ever held in Europe. The theme of the Congress - Geriatric Medicine: New Challenges, New Techniques and New Technologies harnesses the existing strengths of geriatric medicine to meet the new challenges of demography in the European Union and the changing economic climate by incorporating the rapid developments in many fields of technological development. The Congress will also feature EUGMS initiatives in areas such as medication licensing and older people, sarcopaenia, falls, vaccines and palliative care.
An active social programme, plentiful submitted presentations, interactive poster presentations, and convivial surroundings will support learning, networking, interchanges, and deepen our sense of collegiality. The conference website is open for abstract submission (closing date 30th May 2010) and online registration, with early registration continuing to 16 July 2010.
We have distributed our first announcement at many of the congresses of our member national societies over the last six months, and already have had many inquiries about the meeting. In our newsletters, we will try to give a flavour of some of the invited presentations, as well as other aspects of the meeting and the venue!
For our
opening session we are fortunate to have two key-note speakers of the highest
rank.
Her Excellency Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), has spent most of her life as a human rights advocate. As an academic (Trinity College Law Faculty 1968-90), legislator (Senator 1969-89) and barrister (1967-90. Senior Counsel 1980, English Bar 1973) she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change, arguing landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights as well as in the Irish courts and the European Court in Luxembourg. A committed European, she also served on expert European Community and Irish parliamentary committees.
In 1988 Mary Robinson and her husband founded the Irish Centre for European Law at the Trinity College. Ten years later she was elected Chancellor of the University. The recipient of numerous honours and awards throughout the world, Mary Robinson is a member of the Elders, co-founder and former Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders and Vice President of the Club of Madrid. She is chair of the GAVI Alliance Board. She chairs the Fund for Global Human Rights and is Honorary President of Oxfam International, and Patron of the International Community of Women Living with AIDS (ICW). She is President of the International Commission of Jurists.
Now based in New York, Mary Robinson is currently the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. Its mission is to make human rights the compass which charts a course for globalization that is fair, just and benefits all. She has taken a keen interest in ageing and global issues, and in 2007 co-edited a textbook Global Health and Global Aging.
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of
a Naturalist, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he
has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as
one of the leading poets of his generation. He has twice won the Whitbread Book
of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and
Beowulf (1999). In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature. District and Circle, his eleventh collection of
poems, was published in 2006 and was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize. His poetry frequently explores
ageing, as experienced by the person and also by those around them, most
movingly seen in his poems about his
father.
Abstract submission and registration have both opened on www.EUGMS2010.org, and abstract submission closes on 30 May 2010.
Please diffuse this email widely, and we look forward to a convivial meeting in Dublin in September!
Kind regards
Prof Desmond O'Neill
Chair, Local Organizing Committee, EUGMS 2010; President, EUGMS
