The Academic Feast Continues….

president's address

Indian Pediatr 2012;49: 521

	The Insatiable Academic Feast…
Rohit C Agrawal National President 2012, Indian Academy of Pediatrics Email: [email protected]
To continue from where I left in the last presidential column, let me inform you with great pleasure and pride that the first Indian National Asthma Congress was held very successfully at Hyderabad. More than 300 delegates thoroughly enjoyed "Sheer science" focused on one subject over a period of 2 days by a group of national and international experts in the field of asthma and respiratory medicine. A flood of congratulatory emails from those who witnessed is a testimony to it. I am sure hundreds and thousands of children afflicted with asthma are ultimately going to get benefitted through a rational approach to diagnosis and management. Three more major congresses namely National congress on vaccines "Vaccicon", National congress on "Antibiotics" and "India pneumonia summit" are in the pipeline to be held in the near future. Indian Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Immunization (IAPCOI) under the convenership of Dr Vipin Vashishtha has been doing an exemplary and commendable job; and has brought international recognition to IAP. I enumerate a few achievements here: • Development of evidence based recommendations • National AEFI surveillance in association with Government of India • "Immunize India" a mobile SMS based program to remind registered parents for their children’s vaccinations due • To develop our indigenous data on various infectious diseases through "IDSurv" • WHO has recognized and endorsed IAP COI and its recommendations on its website • KAP survey on Hib vaccines and diseases • IAP COI and BD Time and motion study • Global vaccine advocacy project with AAP and IPA • Textbook on Vaccine Sciences (in pipeline) • IAPCOI included in the list of Vaccine Safety net websites • New recommendations on Immunization Time table 2012 being published in this issue of Indian Pediatrics. I am indeed very privileged to chair this COI. My heartfelt gratitude to all the esteemed members and hon’ble advisors of COI for guiding it to scale such heights. It is also very heartening to inform you that I was invited in my capacity as the president of IAP to attend the high powered NTAGI meeting where I could succeed in convincing the honorable members of the committee and the chair – Additional Chief Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on the necessity of including pentavalent vaccine in the national immunization program. I was also delighted to receive an invitation for dinner reception meeting hosted in honor of Mr. Bill Gates in his latest visit to India; however unfortunately I could not attend due to coinciding EB meeting. We had a very successful and satisfactory Executive Board meeting in Goa on 1st and 2nd June where several policies and various issues were deliberated in the most professional and disciplined manner to the best satisfaction of each and everyone. Let me put on record the wholehearted support, cooperation, guidance and valuable inputs from all the executive board members and office bearers of Indian Academy of Pediatrics, only due to which all these activities were made possible. A very important issue of introduction of E-voting was discussed at length in the EB meeting. A wonderful presentation on modalities of the program was made by Dr. Ramesh Goyal. Hopefully we may come out with a concrete solution and an E-voting software. A new IAP software is being developed successfully under the guidance of Dr. CP Bansal, Satish Pandya and their expert CMIC team and is already been put on sale. Good bye to you with a commitment of many more milestones – Keep guessing till the next issue of Indian Pediatrics. Long live IAP.