Over the past few weeks, Stefan Anker, the Scientific Committee and the HFA Board have been putting together the programme for Heart Failure 2010 in Berlin. I think Stefan and his team have come up with an extremely innovative and exciting plan for our annual congress next year which Stefan explains further elsewhere in this Newsletter. More information will follow soon.
Believe it or not, we have also had to provide proposals for the main ESC Congress in Stockholm next year as well and I hope, as a result, that heart failure will be well represented at that meeting as well!
Aldo Maggioni has been leading the pilot Heart Failure Registry which is starting data collection soon and, hopefully, will lead to a larger scale ESC heart failure survey. Aldo explains this interesting new initiative further in this newsletter.
Many of our other activities are highlighted in the rest of this newsletter, including the launch of the fourth language (Spanish) version of our patient website, HeartFailureMatters.org.
I have also some sad news to report. Professor Helmut Drexler, former president of the Working Group on Heart Failure and founding father of the Heart Failure Association, died suddenly and unexpectedly last month. Helmut was a true giant of European Cardiology, a great friend to many and a huge loss not only to his family but also to World Cardiology. He will be sadly missed by all of us. You can read a tribute to Helmut Drexler on the ESC website.
Best wishes,
John McMurray