A three-day international conference on emergency medicine (INTEM) will be held from October 25 to 27, 2002 at Hotel Viceroy in Hyderabad. The conference, being organized by the Society for Emergency Medicine, will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. The first ever international conference on emergency medicine in India is sponsored by the Medical Council of India, Apollo Hospitals, American Academy for Emergency Medicine, Emergency International, Northshore Long Island Jewish Health System, New York, and Morepen.
According to Dr.K.Hari Prasad, Organising Secretary, INTEM, and Director, Emergency Services, Apollo Hospitals, the conference would be a launch pad for an accelerated phase of establishing quality emergency services in India.
Emergency medicine was a neglected speciality in India. Despite big advances in other areas of medicine, emergency medicine had not been given its due place. This leads to over a million avoidable deaths and huge loss of money.
Launched in the year 1999, the Society for Emergency Medicine, India, had been striving hard to bridge this gap in the Indian healthcare system. A number of big hospitals in the country had set up emergency departments and were taking care of pre-hospital services. To liverage the initiative taken by these individual institutions, and to provide a proper perspective to emergency healthcare, the conference would establish emergency medicine as a speciality and help in upgrading and strengthening the existing services in India.
Dr Hari Prasad said the conference would be a launch pad for an accelerated phase of establishing quality emergency services in India.
According to a statement from ITEM, the objectives of the conference include:
* Create awareness in society and the medical fraternity
* Highlight the importance of including the speciality in under-graduate and post-graduate curriculum
* Develop a system of emergency care that suits our country most
* Develop a system protocol for disaster management in the country
* Demonstrate emergency care procedures of international standards and impart hands on training to the participants
The inaugural session will be followed by a path-breaking seminar titled “Emergency Services in India – The road ahead.
The three-day conference will be preceded by a two-day workshop on Advanced Cardiac Life Support on October 23 and 24 at Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad.
The Organising Committee, headed by Dr Pratap C Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals, as patron, includes several specialists from the US, UK and India.
Dr Malka Reddy, Medical Education Minister and Dr Kagodu Thimmappa, Health Minister, both of Karnataka, and Dr Kodela Sivaprasada Rao, Medical and Health Minister of AP, would be addressing the inaugural session.