Malta is a country with a fascinating, rich, colorful history from the time of the apostles to arab and norman invaders to the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem who were given the islands by the Emperor of Spain in exchange for a rent of two Maltese falcons a year. The British took the islands from the French who had taken it from the Knights and Malta achieved autonomy in 1964, flirted with communism for a while, and finally joined the European Union in 2008.
AOTrauma MID Countries (of which there are 18) belonging to South Central and Eastern Europe organized an excellent Regional AO event in Portomasso, Malta. The courses offered to the participants ranged from AOTrauma Advances Courses, chaired by Marius Bonczar (Poland) and Rami Mosheiff (Israel), AO Masters, chaired by Steve Velkes (Israel) and Matej Cimerman (Slovenia) and an AO Hand Course chaired by Zsolt Szabó (Hungary and Matej Kastelec (Slovenia) were organized. Two other Specialities, AOCMF chaired by Simon Hodder (UK) and Spine Principle and Advances courses chaired by Nissim Ohana (Israel) and Papastefanou Sotiris (UK) were also on offer.
This was a truly international event, a real melting pot of cultures. In total 226 participants took part, hailing from all corners of Europe: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Tunisia, Turkey, UK. Meanwhile the Faculty came from AOMID countries in addition to Austria, Canada, Finlad, Germany, India, Italy, Switzerland, UK, USA, Venezuela.
The course venue was the fabulous Hilton in Portomaso, just 20 minutes from the capital city of Valetta and half an hour from the historical capital, Mdina. Just two days before the event the flight situation in Europe was in a critical state. The exploding vulcano in Iceland, Eyjafjallajökul, made everyone a little nervous but after a telephone conference call looking at the situation across the Europe it was decided to go ahead with the course. Miraculously all Faculty arrived on time and only a few students were missing. The award for the strangest journey went to Emanuel Gautiere (Switzerland) who arrived in Malta from Taiwan via Singapore, Sri Lanka, Dubai and Cyprus. Rick Buckley explained that he was on the same course as Emanuel in Taiwan, went back to Canada, performed some surgeries, spent a night at home and arrived in Malta before Emanuel.
After this unusual beginning, the courses ran very smoothly and according to the ARS evaluation were considered a great success from the participants side. Two Educational Board meetings were also organized, to discuss hot topics in the education and surgical fields.
A special visit from the Minister of Health in Malta, Josef Cassar, was a great honor for the course. Cassar visited lectures, discussion groups and practicals, even trying his hand at drilling a sawbone and performing an absolute stability synthesis with great enthusiasm and success. This event received a lot of coverage from the national media. At the banquet, Ales Andrej (Slovenia, former Trustee and honorary guest), received a thank you gift in honor of his pioneering role in establishing this very entusiastic AOTrauma MID group.
I would like to say a big thank to our AOTrauma Education supporters, Steve Shelkun, Clint Miner and Piet de Boer who gave us huge educational and methodological help in addition to performing their distuingushed Faculty roles. Synthes and Siemens also gave their support in making the event such a succes and finally a special thanks to Nadja Wettstein for her enormous contribution to organizing the courses.
We hope everyone enjoyed the courses, built new friendships, and returned home with new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Next year, we will meet again in Malta, to continue our regional education in this wonderful country.
Prof Endre Varga
Chairman AOTrauma MID
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