Dear EOA Members, dear friends,
As I write this message, the year 2014 is nearly history! It was a wonderful year and with pleasure I look back at what has happened. It was great to meet so many of you in Krakow. Thanks to POL-ILKO for a very well organized Congress.
Anne Demick produced the minutes of the meeting of the House of Delegates in Krakow and a short report of the EOA congress. Maria Hass from the contact office in Germany will send you these documents separately.
World Ostomy Day 2015
Next year we will celebrate World Ostomy Day (WOD) on Saturday 3 October. The theme for this worldwide event will be “Many stories, One voice”. Please have a look on our website on a regular basis for more information about WOD 2015. Here you can find also the special WOD 2015 logo. This logo is exclusively for the use of members of EOA to be used for their promotion of WOD 2015.
Activities of EOA member associations.
Kenya
Stoma World Kenya celebrated an “Ostomy Awareness Day” on 11 October 2014. It was a great event with a lot of attendees.
Bosnia Herzegovina.
The first international reunion of representatives of patients with stomas from the area of former Yugoslavia was held on 10 & 11 October 2014 in Gradiska, Republic of Srpska.
Iceland
The Nordic meeting for the board members of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland was organized this year by ISILCO from Iceland. Jón Thorkelson, President of ISILCO, wrote a report about this interesting meeting.
Please take a look on our website for more information and photographs about all these events.
Click on “News/What’s Happening”.
News of EOA-EC.
After their re-election in Krakow, the first meeting of your EOA-EC board was held on 17 & 18 October in Gothenburg, Sweden to which a special guest, Dr. Leif Hultén, was also invited. Dr. Hultén is the successor of Professor Kock, who invented the Kock Pouch, and he knows a lot about this special technique and the problems experienced by people with a Kock Pouch in Europe. At the meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, The Dutch Ostomy Association presented a proposal for a project on Kock Pouch. Dr Hultén has agreed to be an adviser to this project. If there is more news about the start of this Kock Pouch project, I’ll advise you.
Visit Czech ILCO, Prague, November
“Life without Limits” – This is a EU project of Czech ILCO, Deutsche ILCO and Slovilco about the quality of life for ostomates. Pavel Kreml and Marie Redinova from Czech ILCO informed us about the provisional outcome of this project. In November 2014 the end results will be officially presented in Prague.”
This is what was published on our website about the Congress in Krakow. For me it was a great honour to be invited to the conference in Prague for the official presentation of the final report of this project. The board of Czech ILCO did a great job in collaboration with SLOVILCO from Slovakia and Deutsche ILCO, Germany. I congratulate Marie Redinova on this very interesting report and the well-organized conference in Prague.
“A normal life” is what we all in our associations wish to achieve. My sincerest wish is that this survey will be a huge contribution to that objective.
On behalf of the EOA-EC, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2015.
Good luck with all your efforts for the ostomates in your country.
Greetings from the Netherlands
Ria Smeijers.