VIRTUAL PLATFORM

BEFORE YOU GO

BEFORE YOU WATCH

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Friends,

I am pleased to extend a most cordial welcome to all of you at the opening ceremony of the joint meeting of the World Gastroenterology Organisation and the Czech Society of Gastroenterology.

The WGO is unique in its mission – to stimulate experts and institutions from all over the world to collaborate in an effort to mitigate, or better still, to eliminate the disparities in access to health care and medical education in our beloved specialty. The list of all its activities includes, besides international congresses, bilateral meetings with the aim to encourage collaboration of local and international experts across the broad specialty of gastroenterology and hepatology.

I am proud to have participated in all WGO congresses during the last two decades and that I could call at least three of its past presidents – Prof. Classen, Prof. Tytgat and Prof. Kozarek – my mentors and even my friends.

Therefore, my national society accepted, on my behalf and with gratitude, the offer by the then WGO President, David Bjorkman, to host the joint WGO-CSG meeting in Prague in 2020.

Since we have already hosted many top class international meetings including the UEGW, International Coeliac Disease Symposium, ESGE Days and several other events, we found the offer as an expression of the confidence in the ability of our Society to successfully meet the expectations and mission of the WGO.

Nevertheless, what initially appeared as a demanding yet more or less routine job, turned, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, into the most problematic organizational challenge in my life.

Here, I would like to describe two features of the pandemic – its highly uneven impact on different regions and communities and uneven reactions by and attitudes of the nations and communities. We can define some of them as highly restrictive, liberal, fatalistic and dismissive. What is also typical of the pandemic is its unpredictability and penetration into politics and business.

The pandemic has been with us for almost two years and its impact on the community is unparalleled. Besides the high mortality and morbidity rates and exhaustion of health care professionals and the entire system, increasing obesity, addiction, lower birth rates, loss of social contacts, lower quality of education should also be named as at least some of the most prominent features.

What has happened in our specialty: variably decreased numbers of all types of procedures and a transformation of the all kinds of meetings into online format. I am absolutely sure that the quality of the process of education and discussion between face-to-face and virtual meetings is simply incomparable. There is no doubt that virtual presentations lack charisma and can be arbitrarily repeated in virtual space. Therefore, the internet landscape is increasingly crowded with webinars, and online meetings of all types paradoxically diminish the impact of new information.

At this moment, and with respect to the unpredictability of the pandemic, we think that at least three facts are sure. Its size and danger are reduced but not eliminated by vaccination, we cannot expect the pandemic to wane in the near future and therefore we have to find a way of coexistence with well-balanced costs.

Being aware of the difficulties, we finally decided to organize the congress in hybrid format. We know that the attendance will be reduced by restrictions of all kinds, fears of infection, exhaustion of the health care staff, and even by some feeling of frustration and resignation, but we have worked hard and feel that it is about time to start to strive for at least some normalization of our lives.

I have to express my thanks to everybody who has participated in the organization of the event, specifically the WGO representatives for their patience, local and international faculty for their most valuable contributions, the congress agency for their job and, in particular, to everybody who has been willing and able to come in person.

The program is ready, Prague still beautiful, restaurants open and we wish you enjoyable and memorable days.

Tweets by GastroPrague

Compliance

We are pleased to inform you that the GASTRO 2021 PRAGUE is compliant in accordance with the principles and standards set out in the MedTech Europe Code of Ethical Business Practice.

This decision is posted on www.ethicalmedtech.eu!