Dear Delegates of DevelopingEM 2013 and Supporters of DevelopingEM,
We’d like to welcome you to our new website and introduce you to our blog.
We’re aiming to release a post per week and will release all the presentations from Havana with comments and updates right here.
For our first post we’d just like to share with you some of the achievements that you helped obtain in Havana with DevelopingEM 2013.
Sponsored Delegates
Proceeds from your registration allowed for the attendance of 63 regional delegates.
These delegates came from Havana, from all over regional Cuba and from St Lucia in the Windward Islands of the Eastern Caribbean.
This sponsorship gave these delegates the opportunity to attend the conference and participate in the specialised workshops.
Not only were we all able to sponsor their attendance but also some of their transport and accommodation costs were covered by your registration.
Equipment
Proceeds from registration helped us to purchase 3 computer workstations for Cuba and another for St. Lucia.
Each workstation included a 32inch HDTV monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and a 500Gb Mac-Mini CPU pre-loaded with ACEM’s curriculum for a Diploma in EM (as developed by our own John Mackenzie) as well as hundreds of hours of audio and video lectures, podcasts, and presentations.
Thanks again to Joe Lex and everyone else who contributed to our library.
Data storage
Proceeds from registration also allowed DevelopingEM to purchase and distribute over eighty 8-32Gb USB thumb drives to our Cuban and Caribbean colleagues.
These devices, which are near to impossible to acquire in Cuba, were used by many of our colleagues to download textbooks and video files from the workstations during the conference.
Medical Equipment
Two EZIO kits were also donated to the region.
Training
In addition to the Havana plenary sessions our faculty were busy providing much needed training for the region.
Matt and Mike from Ultrasound Podcast fame received enthusiastic accolades for the ultrasound workshop they ran in Castries, St. Lucia.
Meanwhile Ricardo Hamilton and Mary Langcake organized and ran the first fully accredited ATLS course in the Bahamas in the week after DevelopingEM 2013.
Sponsorship
As you know there was opportunity during registration to individually specifically sponsor the registration of delegates, provide funds for donated equipment and also to generally donate funds to our not for profit organization.
Funds of this type contributed to nearly 5 percent of our total income and greatly helped us achieve our aims.
Presenters
Our amazing faculty supplied their time and energy to provide all of us with an amazing educational experience.
Without exception they understood the ethos of DevelopingEM and as a result presenter assistance required was minimal at around 0.5% of our total expense incurred.
Here’s what some of your Caribbean colleagues had to say about the conference.
From Dr. Lisa Charles in Castries, St. Lucia
The DevelopingEM 2013 Conference with a Conscience was most certainly a conference with a difference.
As the Medical Director at the public hospital on a small island in the Caribbean, it has been difficult to find a conference which not only offers alternative practice guidelines for resource strapped environments, but where the attendees are interested in finding solutions to the challenges of Emergency Medicine in Developing Countries.
The conference environment was both receptive and responsive to the challenges faced in practicing emergency medicine in the developing world.
The contacts I made felt more like allegiances in the battle to better emergency medicine in areas where the battle is often fought with gauze bandages and wooden splints.
This is spectacular given the rewards of these allegiances are not published papers and breakthroughs in medicine but a day by day bettering of the very basic needs of patients.
I am indebted to Lee and Mark for inviting St. Lucia to this conference and sponsoring our delegation.
Equally their assistance in getting our bedside ultrasound project off the ground by facilitating the visit of instructors Mark and Mike from Ultrasound Podcast to St. Lucia will go an incredibly long way at our hospital where the radiology services are an x-ray machine and the ultrasound services of a single radiologist from 9 am to 12 noon.
Thanks guys and see you next year in Brazil!
Dr. Lisa Charles Consultant Emergency Medicine, Medical Director Victoria Hospital.
From Dra. Belkys Rodriguez in Cienfuegos Dear Colleagues Mark and Lee:
You are very friendly persons, and very professional, the conference was excellent and that time will be unforgettable for me and my colleagues. I think we will never forget the excellent conference that you organized, the meal in the plaza, beautiful place, full of good persons talking, for me like a dream, and the other social activities.
Many thanks for all. I expect that some day we could meet again. You know that in Cuba you have many friends now. I will never forget those days and you. Abrazos,
Belkys
From Dra Jenny Sanchez Fernandez in Havana
Hello Lee & Mark: Sorry I have not written to you before. I was very busy because I started a course on Abdominal Ultrasound and I´m learning a great deal. I was so interested when you had the workshop on Ultrasound at the Conference in Havana and I discovered that it is an important tool in the hands of an Emergency or ICU doctor. So, when the conference finished I started to made some plans and finally I started the course in Ultrasound. I´m very happy with it.
It was a great experience for me to meet all of you.
Of course I wish to see you again and it will be a fantastic dream to work with you and your colleagues one day.
Kisses and regards for you. Jenny
You may also recall the questionnaire regarding the US embargo that was circulated during the conference. The following letter to President Obama was drafted as a result of your replies.
This letter also received prominent mention in the BMJ article written by Jeanne Lenzer. So many thanks once again to everyone who supported DevelopingEM Havana. Without you none of this would have been possible. We are busy planning DevelopingEM 2014 which will be held in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil from September 8th to 12th.
We hope you can join us and your Brazilian colleagues in this fascinating city.
Once again thankyou for your support and all the best for 2014 from the entire DevelopingEM family.
Kind Regards, Lee and Mark