EuroPharm Forum

Letter to Members, Observers and Sister Fora
EuroPharm Forum News November 2009

Dear Colleagues and Friends

On 8-10 October, the 18th Annual Meeting of the EuroPharm Forum took place in Budapest. The Hungarian National Committee of Pharmaceutical Care was an excellent host, and we enjoyed the beautiful atmosphere in the city.

The Annual Meeting had both a professional part and a political part, the General Assembly. If you are interested in the professional programme, you will find a short summary and most presentations on our website under the report of the Annual Meeting. The speakers were excellent and provided the audience with good inspiration and a foundation for their national work within the areas of obesity, mental health and deregulation of prescription-only medicines.

For my part, the General Assembly was, of course, something I had looked forward to with much anticipation. On the one hand, I believe that the Executive Committee and the Professional Secretariat demonstrated positive results of the year, and I was very pleased to note that this also seemed to be the general feeling among the participating members. But on the other hand, it is no secret that the EuroPharm Forum is under a lot of strain at the moment, and in the Executive Committee we had agreed that we would use the opportunity of the General Assembly to ask the advice of our members. We, therefore, gave an account of the problems, as we had analysed them, and proposed that the Forum seek counsel from an Advisory Committee. This was accepted by the participating members and seen as a way forward for the Forum.

We have since, as a first step, started to set the Terms of Reference of this Advisory Committee and aim at being ready to establish the Committee early next year. While awaiting the conclusions of the Advisory Committee, we will not make any long-term commitments; meanwhile, it was the wish of the General Assembly that we reduce our expenses and, as a consequence thereof, activities in 2010 can be expected to be reduced. As a further consequence, we have also decided to contract with our host of secretariat, WHO Collaborating Centre Pharmakon, for 2010 only.

Since the FIP launched its "Vision 2020", the EuroPharm Forum has prepared a response, "Vision to Practice 2020". This Vision was accepted by the General Assembly and is now available on our website.

Two new Executive Committee members were elected by the General Assembly, and I look forward to working with Carin Svensson, Sweden, and Lidija Petrusevska-Tozi, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Regretfully, we had to accept that Vice-president Astrid Kagedal was not in a position to run for re-election. I have thoroughly enjoyed working together with Astrid, and her enthusiasm and professionalism will certainly be missed. The new Executive Committee had its first meeting immediately following the General Assembly and agreed to appoint Balázs Hankó, Hungary, as our new Vice-president. Balázs is very dedicated and has the EuroPharm Forum at heart.

If you are interested in obtaining more details on the outcomes of the meeting, please check our website for a summary of the General Assembly. Members of the EuroPharm Forum will, of course, receive a full report in due course.

The General Assembly expressed their support of the Executive Committee to carry the EuroPharm Forum forward. In order to honour our members’ trust in us, we will continue to strive to render the EuroPharm Forum vivid and valuable in the coming year and, for this, we need your help and input.