| Chair's Annual Report
1999 was another year with important progresses for the Academy.
The number of teaching courses organised under the aegis of EUREPA
has grown, and comprised both self-organised courses (e.g. a series
of breakfast seminars at the International Epilepsy Congress in
Prague, and a one-week course on Comprehensive Care in Children
in Bethel), and courses held by League chapters and epilepsy centres.
One of the self-organised courses was given at the 6th Mediterranean
Epilepsy Conference in Cairo, and was met with great interest by
representatives of both European and other Mediterranean countries.
The Executive Board met twice, at the 10th Bethel-Cleveland Symposium
in April in Bielefeld (which included a substantial educational
programme of EUREPA) and at the Prague Congress. In Prague, there
were in addition meetings of the General Assembly, the Scientific
Advisory Board, the Corporate Partners Committee, and the first
group of "trainers in training" who finalized their course.
The termination of the first train-the-trainers course is no doubt
to be seen as the highlight of the year because it showed that this
course alone had resulted in quite unexpected improvements of epileptological
education in 5 Eastern European countries. A detailed report is
attached.
The Corporate Partners Committee is now in place, and 7 companies
have become members by the end of the year. This provides the Academy
with a solid financial basis as their regular annual contribution
is Euro 10.000 with a possibility of associate membership with a
contribution of Euro 5.000. All but two members have become full
members. This gave us in turn the possibility to approximately halve
our membership fee from DM 75 to Euro 20 (regular members) and DM
40 to Euro 10 (junior members).
One of our corporate partners has also agreed to sponsor our WebSite
which is now under revision to become more attractive.
Since this summer, our office has taken on the administration of
two transnational activities: the patient education programme MOSES
for the German-speaking countries, and the European research project
EURAP (European Registry of Antiepileptic drugs
and Pregnancy), following requests of the organisers of these
activities.
Talks continued with the EFNS about the mutual educational programmes,
and there is agreement that the aims of these programmes are not
identical. However, it seems useful to develop them in a way which
avoids reduplications of efforts as much as possible. A joint course
is planned for the next EFNS congress in Copenhagen in 2000.
Towards the end of the year, a revised draft of the curriculum
to become a European epileptologist was sent out for discussion
to our members, the Executive Board and the Scientific Advisory
Board. To get this ready and functioning will be the major task
for the next year.
Return to Annual Report 2000 Table of
Contents
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