Newsletter 1 — January 2006
Dear members,
This is our first newsletter updating you about the Heart Failure Society of South Africa (HeFSSA), an official special interest group affiliated to its parent body, the South African Heart Association (SAHA).
The 6th Annual Congress of SAHA in the Drakensberg in October 2005 was the venue for our inaugural meeting. Prof Willem Remme, a prominent European cardiologist, welcomed the efforts to establish an African heart failure society and spoke of both the European and World Heart Failure Societies.
46 attendees signed on as members during the inaugural meeting and together with messages of support from Australia through Prof Simon Stewart, encouragement from Prof Bongani Mayosi of UCT and a clear enunciation of our aims and plans by Prof Karen Sliwa (Chairperson of HeFSSA) from WITS, the meeting was indeed a wonderful initial expression of the enthusiasm that appears to be present among interested members of SAHA’S broad community of cardiologists, specialist nurses, technologists, professionals in allied disciplines and representatives of the pharmaceutical and device industry.
We thank Professors Tshimbi Mathivha, Anton Doubell, Albert Amoah of Ghana, Albertino Damasceno from Mozambique, and Patrick Mokhobo, for showing their support for the society and we appeal to members of SAHA both in private and public health arenas to fill in their membership forms and become members of the first heart failure society on the African continent.
Since our inauguration, the interim committee has been involved with the design of the membership forms, and the website.
New Project: Invitation to Participate in the SA Heart Association’s ESC Guidelines Publication Project
The South African Heart Association has been recognised as an affiliate member of the European Society of Cardiology. One of the major benefits of this affiliation is that is that it allows SA Heart to use the guidelines of the ESC, provided that they are published unaltered, in their original form. It is the intention of the Executive Committee and the Ethics and Guidelines Standing Subcommittee to proceed with the publication of the heart failure ESC guidelines as supplements to the SA Heart Journal with the May 2006 issue.
A full text version of the ESC guidelines on acute and chronic heart failure can be downloaded from www.escardio.org/knowledge/guidelines.
If you do not have Adobe Reader, it can be downloaded free of charge from www.adobe.com/acrobat.
If you feel that aspects of the guidelines should be changed in accordance with current South African practice, then please contact us by email at erika@saheart.org, marked “change to guidelines” by the 20 February 2006.
Your contribution should be in English and should follow the Vancouver style. The text should be in MS Word.
With best wishes,
Dr Eric Klug
Secretary
Interim Committee:
Prof Karen Sliwa - Chairperson
Dr Eric Klug - Secretary
Dr Olaf Forster - Treasurer
Dr Martin Sussman - Member
Kevin Francis - Member representing pharmaceutical industry
Craigh Smith - Member representing device industry