You are a member of the European Section, and may apply for MDS-ES programs if you are based in the following countries:
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Armenia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Gibraltar
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Latvia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malta
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Portugal
Romania
Russia
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Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Tunisia
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
Vatican City
West Bank and Gaza
Werner Poewe,
Chairman
Welcome from the new European Section (ES) Chair
Innsbruck
July 2011
Dear Colleagues,
Having had the honor to serve as President of MDS International from 2001-2002 I feel grateful and honored to have again received the trust of the membership and to assume the Chair of the European Section.
Having a group of dedicated and outstanding Movement Disorder colleagues from Europe to support me in the roles of Officers and European Section Executive Committee members, as well as the expertise of the new European Education Committee members, will be crucial as I follow the successful Chairmanship of my predecessor, Alfredo Berardelli. Alfredo has been an outstanding Chair of the Section.
He has encouraged Movement Disorders groups within Europe to affiliate to MDS, and has furthered the relationship with the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) through his Chairmanship of the joint EFNS/MDS-ES Scientist Panel on Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, overseeing the development of several European clinical recommendations.
I would like to also acknowledge the contribution of the Officers and ESEC members who left the Section leadership in Toronto: Wolfgang Oertel, Gregor Wenning, Anette Schrag, David Burn, Regina Katzenschlager, Joaquim Ferreira, and Jaime Kulisevsky – we owe them all a debt of gratitude for their service. I welcome Olivier Rascol as Chair-Elect, Claudia Trenkwalder as Secretary-Elect, Murat Emre as Treasurer-Elect, and Christine Klein, Per Odin, Paolo Barone and Pierre Pollak to the ESEC.
Education will continue to be a central plank in the activities of the Section, and I am particularly grateful that Joaquim Ferreira has agreed to chair the European Education Committee for a second term. Serving with him on the Committee will be Pille Taba, Klaus Seppi, Mario Miguel Rosa, Angelo Antonini, Evzen Ruzicka, Cristian Falup and Claudia Trenkwalder.
The MDS-ES Summer Schools have been one of our most appreciated educational activities, enjoyed by faculty and students alike, and in a separate article in this newsletter Paolo Barone and Alfredo Berardelli tell us about the Summer School that has just taken place in Naples. The Summer Schools have all been oversubscribed with twice the number of applicants for the number of places available, and to meet this demand we are for the first time offering a Winter School, to take place in Innsbruck 24th-26th February 2012.
Our collaborative agreement with the EFNS is very important to the Section, particularly for the opportunity that the EFNS Congress provides for us to offer Movement Disorders education for general neurologists in Europe. The agreement currently runs until 2012 but is due for renewal in 2011. The Section Officers will meet the leadership of EFNS in Budapest to determine what will happen in 2013, when there is no EFNS Congress because of the World Federation of Neurology Congress taking place in Vienna, and look to the future as the EFNS and the ENS hold their first joint Congress in 2015 and consider a possible merger.
You have elected your Section leadership to move the field of Movement Disorders in Europe further forward, and to do this our aims will be to:
• Expand further the MDS-ES outreach to underserved areas of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa
• Promote the field of Movement Disorders more widely amongst young neurologists
• Continue to develop interactions with national movement disorders groups, and other general neurology organizations, and to strengthen links within the MDS Regional Sections
• Further develop and diversify MDS-ES educational programs
• Promote communication and collaboration with allied health professional groups in Europe
I look forward to working for you and with you to achieve these objectives over the next two years.
With best regards,
Werner Poewe
Chair, MDS-ES