EBMT Has Successful Finish To 34th EBMT Annual Congress, Plans For The Coming Year

Main Category: Blood / Hematology
Also Included In: Lymphoma / Leukemia;  Transplants / Organ Donations
Article Date: 10 Apr 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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The 34th Annual Congress of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) closed its session on the afternoon of 2 April 2008, wrapping up a successful five day Congress with a range of activities, informational sessions, and workshops. This years Congress had a record number of 4,713 participants, up 30% from previous years.

Professor Alberto Bosi, the President of the Congress was thrilled with the high number of participants and mentioned: "The EBMT Congress is the world's largest medical congress dedicated to stem cell transplantation, which illustrates how important EBMT's work is. This year we hosted delegates from all over the world, a total of 76 countries. People came from North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Europe."

Dr. Ricardo Saccardi, the Scientific Chairman of the Congress, was responsible for the topics of the informational sessions, workshops, and plenary sessions. He summed up the event by saying, "Stem cell transplantation is a large source of hope for the scientific community, because it offers the chance to cure increasingly severe diseases. The different sessions and workshops really present the tremendous opportunities which await EBMT in the future. Of course, for the present, we are very focused on the challenges which we are about to solve such as Graft vs. Host Disease (GvHD)."

The EBMT Congress also focused on collective challenges facing the larger medical community. Professor Dietger Niederwieser, President of EBMT said "We find that EBMT has a particular role to play in the institutional environment. EBMT also provides its advice, methodology, and expertise to conduct academic clinical trials."

In addition, EBMT plans to be more involved in nuclear accident preparedness. Prof. Niederwieser says: "Our politicians must realize how urgent it is to develop in advance and execute procedures in the event of a nuclear accident." To accomplish this, EBMT is closely collaborating with the World Health Organization (WHO) within its Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Assistance Network (REMPAN[1]). The WHO coordinates international activities in public health and medical preparedness and response to radiation emergencies. In the near future, common initiatives will be launched to raise awareness surrounding this issue and strengthen the European countries capacity to manage the impact of such emergencies

The EBMT looks forward to presenting new achievements in these areas during the 35th Annual Congress in Goteborg Sweden, from 28 March to 1 April, 2009.

About the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Bone marrow or stem cell transplantation is often the only curative treatment for different malignant diseases and is currently performed on more that 50,000 patients worldwide each year. The European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) as the leading non-profit, scientific society representing 530 transplant centres in and outside Europe, promotes all activity aiming to improve stem cell transplantation or cellular therapy. This includes registering all the activity relating to stem cell transplants with a view to improving treatment outcomes for patients. EBMT has set standards for indication and treatment for malignant and non-malignant diseases, along with running training programmes for continual professional development. These are continually audited and updated. EBMT is also responsible for accrediting the transplant centres based on their performance and data reporting.

[1] See URL: http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/a_e/rempan/en/index.html

European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation