The annual ESCV meeting 2009 has been organized by Gulden Yilmaz and her colleagues in Istanbul. And in spite of the beginning flu epidemics, which kept many colleagues who originally wanted to attend at their home institutes for local H1N1 control and epidemiology, it was a vivid and very nice meeting. Please have also a look at the conference photos, also shown on the ESCV website. A large number of younger colleagues were present at the meeting and the travel grants given by ESCV have allowed 11 young researchers to attend.
Besides the official program, which was summarized by Gulden (also to be seen on the website), we also enjoyed a lot the social side of the conference, the great reception at the first evening, the city tour bringing us to the old city of Istanbul, to the blue mosque and the bazaar. And not to forget the football match, which was finally won (of course) by the clinical virologists. Furthermore there was the wonderful boat trip on the Bosporus at the last evening. All these events were allowing us to get easily into touch with other colleagues in a very nice surrounding.
We thank Gulden Yilmaz and her colleagues of the local organizing committee, Gülendam Bozdayi, Dilek Colak, Selda Erensoy, Yesim Gürol, Tijen Özacar, Seyyal Rota, Arzu Sayiner and Aysin Zeytinoglu very much for their great hospitality and the opportunity to have such a nice and interesting meeting in Istanbul.
12 Annual ESCV 2009 meeting was held in Istanbul on 27-30 September 2009 in the Harbiye Military Museum, which is an historical setting in the middle of Istanbul and was built as a Military Academy in 1841. The building served as a military academy until 1936 and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Republic of Turkey, also studied in this school from 1899 to 1905. The building was restored in 1966, turned into a modern military museum, preserving its historical and architectural character. In 1993, the Site of Culture and some other sections were added to the museum and it was opened for visitors and meetings in its present form.
There were with 381 participants, 111 of whom were Turkish participants and 47 of whom were from companies. Besides participants from all over Europe, scientists from various different countries were presents: 17 from USA, 2 from Canada, 2 Taiwan, 1 Singapore, 1 Pakistan, 3 Korea,1 Kuwait, 1 Lebonan,1 India, 4 Iran, 2 Eygpt.
There were 5 conferences: Antiviral activity of acyclic and cyclic nucleoside phosphonates by Erik De Clercq, Insight into influenza A(H1N1) by Bruno Lina, Diagnosis and monitoring of adenovirus infections in immunocompromised patients by Louis Kroes, The role of hepatitis B virus surface proteins in immune protection and escape by Wolfram H Gerlich and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever in Turkey by Önder Ergönül.
Four keynote lectures were as follows: Clinical virology of Rotavirus infection by Ahmed Kamruddin, Role of viruses in transplant recipients by Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl, Epidemiology of delta hepatitis and use of laboratory tools in the management of patients by Cihan Yurtaydın and Molecular viral diagnostics by William Carman.
There were 7 meet the expert sessions which was a first in ESV meetings. These were scheduled early in the morning and aimed to be interactive where the participants had the opportunity to discuss the subject with the expert. The number of participants exceeded the limitation of 35 and the feed back from these meetings was very high.
Meet the expert sessions were ‘Submitting an article to Journal of Clinical Virology’ by William Carman and Christine Ginocchio, ‘Quality control in molecular virology laboratory’ by H.G.M. Niesters, ‘Laboratory diagnosis of viral gastroenteritis’ by Ahmed Kamruddin, ‘Anti-viral resistance testing in hepatitis B virus infection’ by Mithat Bozdayı, ‘Test validation and accreditation in the clinical virology laboratory’ by Holger F Rabenau and Harald H Kessler, ‘Laboratory tools and monitoring of hepatitis C virus infection’ by Harald H Kessler and ‘Fetal infections by human parvovirus B19 and cytomegalovirus’ by Louis Kroes.
There was a local virology meeting preceding the 12th annual meeting. The meeting was accredited by UEMS with 15 European CME credits and by Turkish Medical Association Continuing Medical education accreditation committee with 19 TTB-STE credits.There were 46 oral and 202 poster presentations. From the posters only 12 were not exibited. Four of them have informed us that they were not able to come.
There was the satellite symposium by Abbott ‘Viral Diagnostics: From discovery to improved patients management’ chaired by Rolf Kaiser: HCV antigen detection: What does this modality offer? by Richard Tedder, HBV Genotype: Resistance-escape-detection by Rolf Kaiser, Global surveillance of H1N1 influenza virus genotypes by mass spectrometry by Rick Pyles, The role of xTAG RVP Fast in meeting the diagnostic challanges of pandemic ınfluenza: Lessons learned from the epicenter of NY City novel Influenza AH1N1 Outbreak by Christine Ginocchio.
Abbott award was given to Rory N Gunson who gave a lecture ‘Bringing real time PCR to the real world. Gardner Lecture was by Richard Tedder on ‘Hepatitis B/HIV coinfection, the Scylla and Charybdis of clinical virology in the 21st century.
The meeting was kindly sponsored by Abbott, Argene, Astra Diagnostic, Diasorin, Genomed and Nanogen, Copan, Biomerieux, Focus diagnostic, Luminex, Mobidiag, Roche, Qiagen,Elsevier and Alphan Medical.
Gulden Yilmaz
