Dear
CLAE members,
Hope
everyone enjoyed a wonderful summer. We have a very busy fall ahead of us,
starting with our 30th anniversary meeting in Vancouver.
1. National
affairs:
A- Canadian League Against Epilepsy Meeting: The CLAE meeting is
closing in. We already have more than 40 registered participants from Canada,
Japan and the Middle East. We have the capacity to accommodate 150. We have
pushed back some of the deadlines due to difficulties with online registration
or abstract submission. All seems to be running well now. If you have any
difficulties with the application please use Feedback on the home page. For all other issue related to the meeting please contact me directly at lionel.carmant@umontreal.ca
Here
are the new deadline dates:
Registration for the meeting: September 1,
2007
Abstract submission deadline: September 1,
2007
Abstract acceptance confirmation: September 15, 2007
You
can find the official scientific program on our website.
Other
key activities will include a Multi-Centre Clinical Trial Project presentation session on October 2, 2007 in
the afternoon. This is led by the CESSG (Epilepsy Surgery Group) but will
include ongoing and future projects from CPEN and CERI. This will be held at
the same venue as the meeting (Wosk Centre). This activity is a major one as
funding is really going into these multi-centre trials.
In
the evening of October 2, 2007 we will have a Welcoming Reception, which will be held at the
Sheraton Wall Centre to promote participation of local media and politicians.
The Sheraton Wall Centre is located 5 minutes away from the Wosk Centre.
Unfortunately, despite all our efforts, we will not have a Canadian official
present at the meeting.
On
Wednesday October 3, 2007 evening, we will hold the CLAE Banquet. Transportation will be
organised to take us to Sage Bistro at the University Centre where a site visit
will take place followed by dinner, all between 19 - 22:30.
On
Thursday October 3, 2007 morning, we will have the Annual General Assembly and the research
awards ceremony. There is a possibility that our gold sponsor (Xycorp) will
organise a breakfast-conference to discuss the Pulse study and an upcoming
Canadian Retrospective Study prior to the general assembly, which will start at
8 AM and should not last more than 30 minutes.
B- CLAE-CEA join forces: At our June 21, 2007 Board meeting, it was decided that CLAE had to support only one lay organisation.
The ILAE/IBE requires that for a country to host one of their meeting, it has
to show a strong professional league and a strong lay organisation. The IBE had
been pressuring us to identify our lay organisation as Epilepsy Canada were not
responding and had an inactive website. We therefore decided to support the
Canadian Epilepsy Alliance, as our representative on the IBE. CEA officials had
a first meeting with IBE officials at the ILAE meeting in Singapore. To further
pursue this collaboration, we are organising a CEA-CLAE patient information day
prior to the CLEA meeting on Monday October 1. I would like to
thank Drs Richard McLachlan and Don Gross for agreeing to participate in this
event and Dr Mary Connolly for her collaboration.
On
Tuesday October 2nd, both Boards will meet to discuss further
collaborations in patient education, research, fundraising, advocacy, and
lobbying. This will be held at the Wosk Centre on Tuesday morning.
C- Epilepsy support in Canada: Our fundraising is
still moving forward. I have created a permanent fundraising committee
including Drs Carmant, Poulter and Connolly. We would like to have 2 more CLAE
members join in, one from the Maritimes and one from the central provinces. If
you are interested, please contact me.
Our
search for seed money was partially successful as George and Caroline Savoy
decided to match our CLAE account funds, so for now we are planning to hire
someone to help us organise a fundraising campaign working one day per week for
CLAE. It is not much but it is a start. But Mr Savoy message was clear, we have
to help ourselves before we ask others to help us, as he asked me to get back
to them when we will be genuinely ready to raise money.
D- CCNS 2007 epilepsy course: The course was a
true success, the room was packed and I would like to thank the organizers Drs
Richard Wennberg and Mark Sadler, as well as the speakers Don Gross, Sam Wiebe,
Andrew Parent, Andrea Bernasconi, Taufik Valiante, Mary Connolly and James
Ruthka for an excellent job. The video-EEG session was also well attended and
thanks to Drs Richard MacLachlan, Sharon Whiting, Mary Connolly and
Sam Wiebe the ratings of presentations were once again excellent.
E- CLAE Task Forces: To take advantage of the desire our
young members to contribute, we have created 4 task forces that will provide us
with reports that can be used for lobbying to Provincial Governments across the
country. Dr Taufik Valiante is in charge of Regional Epilepsy Networks, Dr Jorge Burneo from London Health Sciences Centre
of disparities in epilepsy care, Dr Nizam Ahmed from Walter Mackenzie Health
Science Centre of telemedicine and Dr David Steven also from London Health
Sciences Centre of telemetry. If you are interested contributing, please contact
them and if you have any other idea of topics that should be brought to
attention, please let us know.
2. International
Affairs:
A- North American Commission: I am happy to
report that thanks to Dr Sam Wiebe's effort, the North American Commission budget
was approved by ILAE. The commission will be able to move forward in the
development of projects involving remote areas in Canada and USA, Caribbean's,
and South America. These include the development of telemedecine networks,
collaborations between Canadian centres and developing countries for patient
care and teaching as well as the creation of new epilepsy clinic in some of the
most under served countries.
B- Eastern EEG Society Meeting: This year the Eastern
EEG meeting which will be held in the Laurentians on February 15-17 2008, is
being considered by AES for a partnership as a regional meeting. I encourage
other small societies to let the CLAE offices know about their meeting dates as
financial support could be available from AES-CLAE partnerships.
C- International collaborations: As our leadership
role is being more and more recognised at the international level, starting
with the ILAE, I would like to put on our website Canadian contributions to
Epilepsy Care and Education across the globe. Indeed, I learned at the last
ILAE meeting that Dr Sharon Whiting has been providing guidance to the Jamaican
Chapter of the ILAE, that Dr Shelly Weiss is giving courses in Israel, that Dr
Connolly has collaborations in Asia and I am sure many others are involved as
well. For example, Dr Ante L. Padjen with IBRO School with African and Latin American neuroscience
students in Toronto was a true success.
As I receive mail from diverse
countries looking for help, it would be great to have a directory of the people
already involved in work in other countries. So if everyone would let us know
about their international non-conference related activities, we could add this
on our website.
Our next meeting will be the CLAE Annual General Assembly
on Thursday October 4th in Vancouver 8AM. I hope to see everybody
there. I will post agenda as soon as it is finalised, so please check your
website regularly.
Lionel
Carmant,
President of
the Canadian League Against Epilepsy |
