26 WORLD GASTROENTEROLOGY NEWS APRIL 2015 Editorial | Expert Point of View | Gastro 2015: AGW/WGO | WDHD News | WGO & WGOF News | WGO Global Guidelines | Calendar of Events looking into the effect of vaccines that have been initiated in New Zealand. Our country will most likely also see an introduction of a population-wide bowel cancer screening program in the next few years using immunohistochemical fecal occult blood testing. A whole session was dedicated to hereditary colon cancer syndromes. In a further plenary session, held jointly with AuSPEN, Professors John Windsor and John Shaffer covered nutrition support in pancreatitis. An additional scientific boost for the Annual Scientific Meeting was provided by the Gut Health Network (www.guthealthnetwork.com). This is a collaborative network of clinicians, researchers, and patients who organized a satellite workshop preceding the main meeting. This proved to be an excellent showcase of fundamental gut-related science done in New Zealand. To conclude the afternoon on ‘Diet, Metabolites and Western Lifestyle Diseases’, Professor Gerald Tannock, microbiologist at the University of Otago, highlighted the need for transparency and translation of fundamental research for the individual patient to ensure participation and enthusiasm. In 2014, the New Zealand Society of Gastroenterology was fortunate to have been able to spend more than NZ$121,000 on research grants, fellowships, and scholarships. The meeting gave all these young and mature researchers the possibility to present their work, which ranged from audits aimed to change clinical practice to fundamental science such as the growth of human stem-cell derived colonic enteroids. The highlight of every conference is the conference dinner and as per tradition, the evening of prizegiving, awarding, shoulder tapping and slapping was themed. ‘Dress as your hero’ inspired hundreds of Supermen and –women, Ghandis, Captain Americas, and Robin Hoods to celebrate a night to remember. The 2014/15 awards ceremony saw a total of NZ$107,000 in research, poster and presentation awards. We are looking forward to hearing about the progress of the main recipients: Dr. Tim Angeli (NZSG AbbVie Research award for ‘Targeted Ablation Therapy for Treatment of Gastrointestinal Dysrhythmias’), Drs. Russell Walmsley, Michael Schultz, and Murray Barclay (NZSG Janssen Research Fellowship – ‘A multicenter pilot study on the use of smartphone based health applications’) and Dr. Peter Swan (NZSG Janssen Research Fellowship – ‘Thermal Properties of the Liver & Hepatic Tumors improving understanding and outcome from microwave ablation of liver cancers’). Planning is already underway for the 2015 Annual Scientific Meeting and we would like to welcome you all to our great country. Ka kite ano for now and Kia ora in Rotorua.
ewgn-vol20-issue1-FINAL
To see the actual publication please follow the link above