The IPCRG is moving into a new phase of work, reaching new countries and new models of care. We are working closely with colleagues from Chile, Brazil, Eritrea and China to explore potential education and research projects to improve respiratory health.
2014 CONFERENCE IN ATHENS
Planning is already underway for the conference, scheduled to be held in Athens 21–24 May 2014. The Scientific Committee have met now on two occasions. It consists of: Chair: Ioanna Tsiligianni, Crete; Christos Lionis (abstract lead), Crete; Antonio Infantino, Italy; Niels Chavannes, the Netherlands; Miguel Roman, Majorca; Tan Tze Lee, Singapore; Jim Reid, New Zealand; and Nick Zwar, Australia. We aim to use the location of the conference to promote high quality primary respiratory care in the Eastern Mediterranean region and to network with colleagues from this region.
Uppsala Research Meeting 23–24 May 2013 Extended
Registration and abstract submission opens 1 December 2012; abstract deadline: 10 March 2013. The Uppsala meeting will be extended by a day to include Saturday 25 May 2013 for the members of the Research Network to develop proposals for funding applications. If you wish to join the Research Network and contribute to these discussions, please let us know.
Education
We will shortly be in a position to announce the successful applicants for round two of our E-Quality programme. We shortlisted bids from Brazil and Eritrea. These will be supported in addition to the continuation of our two existing E-Quality projects, transposition of Spirometry Fundamentals and Spirometry 360 from Washington to Adelaide, and multi-method evaluation of an asthma education programme in Pune India for GPs who do not prescribe inhaled medicines.
Research
The first E-faculty visit has now been made to Chile by our Spanish member, GRAP Spain, to support their colleagues in newly established Chilean GRAP to develop primary care research, supported by the Ministry of Health. There will be three work streams: epidemiological surveys, improvement in COPD care—led by the primary care physiotherapists, and improvement in asthma care in the under-fives. The under-fives research will build on the experience of highly successful vertical programmes for tackling childhood respiratory infection that already exist and have led to significant reductions in childhood mortality.
FRESH AIR Uganda is in the data analysis phase. A TV documentary has been commissioned. We are responding to interest in the FRESH AIR protocol from Kyrgyzstan, India and China.
Our UNLOCK programme has five projects underway that are analysing multinational data on cohorts of patients with COPD to answer important questions for primary care. The UNLOCK group has now agreed to extend into asthma. The UNLOCK group can draw on 22 000 COPD records and 115 000 asthma records and has real potential to achieve rapid answers to useful questions for primary care.
External affairs
We are in discussions with The Union to optimize the use of the Asthma Drug Facility and to build the case for inhaled medicines to be re-designated by the World Health Organisation as a ‘best buy.’
As the Respiratory Special Interest Group of Wonca Europe, we will be running four respiratory workshops at the Wonca Europe and World conference in Prague in 2013. We are also building on this experience to propose workshops for the next Nordic conference of family medicine.
Working with the ERS we have written the primary care chapter of the New ERS White Book, and are collaborating on a survey on rare lung diseases, the findings of which will inform the development of guidance for primary care on the detection of rare lung disease.
IPCRG web platform
We will be making contact with all colleagues on our database to register for our website http://www.theipcrg.org, which then enables you to create discussion forums and to comment on existing forums and blog posts.
Webcasts from the Edinburgh 2012 Conference—Breathing New Life—are now available on our website: http://www.theipcrg.org/display/EVENTS Edinburgh/Edinburgh+2012+Webcasts
We encourage you to view these to catch up on what you missed. Contact: Sam Louw, e-mail: [email protected]