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I will discuss the past year during which I have been president.
I would initially like to sincerely thank all the exco who have done a sterling job this year and achieved a great deal through their efforts. The exco spend a tremendous amount of their time pursuing important matters for the benefit of the members of SA Heart.
We, SA Heart, have expanded tremendously and have increased our influence considerably with the health providers, HPCSA and SAMA. We are becoming a recognized body representing cardiologists and cardiac surgeons in South Africa. SA Heart now incorporates many important special interest groups including CASSA, SASCI, HeFSSA, LASSA, PCSSA, Nuclear Cardiolgy and now the surgeons thanks to the efforts of Dr Robbie Kleinloog will also come on board as a special interest group. SASCI, under the leadership of Tom Mabin, is organizing the "Heart to Heart 2007", the 8th Annual Congress of the SA Heart Association in conjunction with the 4th Indian Ocean Meeting of Cardiovascular Disease, under the auspices of the South African Society of Cardiovascular Intervention (SASCI) and South African Society of Thoracic and Cardiac Surgery in Sun City 20-25th November, 2007. Collaborators are HeFSSA and PCSSA.
We of course still have functional regional branches and as you know the congress this year has been organized by Professor Francis Smit and Dr Nico Van der Merwe of the Bloemfontein branch and I would like to in anticipation thank them and their committee most sincerely for their efforts. The Cape Town regional branch under the chairmanship of Johan Brink who has kindly and courageously accepted the task will organize the 2008 congress.
SASCI, under the leadership of Tom Mabin, is organizing the "Heart to Heart 2007", the 8th Annual Congress of the SA Heart Association in conjunction with the 4th Indian Ocean Meeting of Cardiovascular Disease, under the auspices of the South African Society of Cardiovascular Intervention (SASCI) and South African Society of Thoracic and Cardiac Surgery in Sun City 20-25th November, 2007. HeFSSA and PCSSA are collaborating.
While the regional branches and SIG’s act independently and mostly continue being active I would like to encourage close cooperation between all the different groups and the “parent body” in order to promote strength and unity amongst all of our members. There have been many successful meetings during the year organised by the various independent groups. I am most encouraged by the strong initiatives that some of the SIG’s have taken and their influence amongst doctors, health providers and industry.
I think of extreme importance to SA Heart is our close liaison with the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). This affiliation was started by Professor Anton Doubell during his term of office as president and came to fruition during Dr Colin Schamroth’s term of office. I will not expand on this now but there are many benefits that may derive from our affiliation with the ESC which need to be pursued. I have had some personal discussions with members of the ESC this year. Professor Mayosi and Dr Schamroth have recently represented us at the ESC in Barcelona and the ESC are very keen to foster close ties with all affiliate societies including SA Heart.
Our other important affiliation is with the Pan African Society of Cardiology (PASCAR), which was reactivated in 2004. We are strongly represented on PASCAR by Professor Bongani Mayosi and Dr Colin Schamroth. I would like to encourage more participation in PASCAR by our members, more support, and attendance at their next congress, which is in Kenya next May. We are presently sponsoring the secretariat of PASCAR through our secretary’s assistance, Erika Dau, as well as financially contributing to this. We have also contributed a substantial sum of money to PASCAR in order to rejuvenate their web site.
Dr Anthony Stanley, our secretary and chairman of the private practice committee, has again served us well in his capacity as secretary. He has also once again continued representing us at SAMA meetings spending many hours of his time there. A project was initiated trying to gain an independent audit of our practice costs. Although this was totally confidential the response was extremely poor.
Dr Ronnie Jardine as treasurer for the 7th year has continued in his selfless efforts to control and coordinate all our finances. Once again he has done a sterling job.
The full time salaried practice committee under Professor Pravin Manga has again been very involved in organising the cardiology exam and the important task of educational training in cardiology. This has been in association with the Education committee under the leadership of Professor Tshimbi Mathivha who together with her sub-committee have been very involved in cardiology training for undergraduates.
Professor Manga has also led a “task force” in organising and publishing a position statement on cardiac imaging which basically states that these image modalities are not the sole domain of any particular speciality but that they are subject to proper training as per the ACC/AHA clinical competency guidelines regardless of the specialist involved. I believe this mission statement is important and will be open to scrutiny by all the main players including the health providers, HPCSA and SAMA.
It has been a pleasure to again have Dr Tony Dalby on board. He, together with the relevant SIG’s and chosen individuals, has been instrumental in the publication of guidelines. These include at this point both the heart failure and lipid guidelines. As you know because of our affiliation with the ESC we have been allowed to use their guidelines in their entirety together with local additional commentary.
As you know SA Heart Journal is being published on a regular basis. This has been a great success thanks to the ongoing and tremendous efforts of Professor Doubell, current editor. The academic level of the articles continues to improve, the newsletter is included and guidelines published. We are ultimately aiming to make SA Heart an internationally recognised journal.
We have had some problems with the current publisher and are attending to this.
Once again I would like to thank Dr Adriaan Snyders very much for his tireless attempts to publish the newsletter and ask that he get more support in this task. I hope that he will continue in this role.
There have been some disappointments for me. Although the script pad project continues the member’ support for this has been poor. I would again like to emphasize that all information obtained from the scripts remains completely anonymous and could be very valuable to our society.
The cath lab registry under Professor Doubell’s guidance has been a laborious task for him but hopefully has now reached the point where it will be implemented in cath labs country wide and supply us with very useful information. To this effect we have employed a full time data base coordinator to roll out the registry in the different labs.
It remains for me to thank most sincerely some key people on the exco.
I would like to personally thank my vice president Professor Bongani Mayosi who now becomes president elect. I am not sure how Bongani fulfils all his obligations with such enthusiasm and effort and where he gets the time but he always seems to be on top of the project and he has been a support for me.
Dr Colin Schamroth our current immediate past president has again been an invaluable member of the exco and I thank him for imparting his wisdom and advice and his ongoing support of SA Heart. He thinks this is his last year on exco but I have other ideas for him.
I hope for the coming year we can continue to grow together, make a difference for our members and importantly improve the state of the “heart” for our patients.
We have again contributed financially to both 2 travel scholarships during this year.
I would lastly like to thank Erika Dau our secretary in the SA Heart office most sincerely for her efforts during the year. Her efficiency in organizing and constant reminding of important issues has aided the association tremendously once again. She has also admirably fulfilled the task of secretary to PASCAR as well. We could not function efficiently without her.
Len Steingo
President SA Heart
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