Stockholm 2nd of June 2020
Dear EUPSA Members,
I hope you and your families are well! The last year has been very different from what we were used to. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on all of us. The care of patients with COVID-19 has required outstanding resources and, despite children are less seriously affected, we have all struggled to provide pediatric surgical care. Life in general has also become completely different, although the pandemic has affected some Countries more seriously than others.
The dates for the planned EUPSA joint Congress with IPEG and ESPES are approaching, but due to the pandemic the EUPSA Congress in Vienna was cancelled. In March, we had discussions with IPEG about how we should handle the situation. There were discussions about postponing the Congress until August or September. It is now obvious that it was a correct decision to cancel the Congress completely. You are free to submit your abstracts that were accepted for the Congress elsewhere. Many of you chose to submit a manuscript to the European Journal of Pediatric Surgery, which will be considered by the Publication Committee. The 12th of June the Executive Board and the Offices will have e-meetings. New Members will be elected for the Offices and we will decide about venues for future EUPSA Congresses. We have previously informed you that there will be no General Assembly Meeting this year. According to the Swiss regulations (EUPSA is registered in Switzerland) it isn’t mandatory to have a physical General Assembly Meeting, but after the Executive Board Meeting we will put together General Assembly ¨minutes¨ that will be sent to all of you. It will be possible to ask question or object to information in the minutes over a four-week period.
Now we are looking forward to next year’s Congress. The EUPSA Congress 2021 will be organized in Athens the 16th to 19th of June and the team in Athens has started to prepare for what we hope will be a very successful meeting. It is time to start thinking about abstracts to submit!
The EUPSA has started to organize electronic educational activities. Last week a webinar on ¨Decision-making in Pediatric Colorectal Surgery¨ was organized in collaboration between the EUPSA Education Office and Marc Levitt, National Children’s Hospital, Washington DC. This week there will be a webinar on ¨Controversies in the treatment of CPAM¨. We are planning to continue with additional webinars and hope that you will enjoy them. Please, look at the EUPSA website (www.eupsa.info ) for further information.
Best Regards
Tomas Wester
EUPSA President
