At the IFHE’s 16 November Council meeting in Tokyo (see also story on page 6) Francesco Castella handed over the Presidency to Yasushi Nagasawa of Japan. The meeting saw 24 IFHE member countries report on their activities during the past two years.
The IHEEM report was given by Ronnie Browne, who said that not only had the membership increased slightly, but also confirmed the success of the Institute’s recent training seminar programme and 2010 Annual Conference and Exhibition. Other topics discussed included the continued support for healthcare in East Africa, where IFHE will sponsor a number of engineers from developing countries both to attend the next South African conference, and to spend time with Mediclinic, a private healthcare provider, gaining engineering experience to take back to their own hospitals. An application to join IFHE by Chinese body, the Hospital Architecture System Research Branch, was unanimously approved. An expression of interest in joining had also been received from Chile, but no formal application had yet been forthcoming. As fees for member countries had not been increased for some time, it was also agreed that a 10% increase would be implemented for 2011. Some discussion on the merits of the IFHE website took place, and Norway’s Gunnar Baekkan asked that member organisations consider providing articles for the library section. Andy Wavell undertook to speak to IHEEM colleagues about this. Andy Wavell then reported on the work undertaken to produce the IFHE Digest, and asked members for their support for the next issue. Members agreed that the 2010 Digest was an excellent publication and were pleased with the change of publisher. Having seen drafts of the 2011 publication (which has since been published), members were delighted with the content. Bids for the 2014 Congress had been received by the General Secretary, who asked both Argentina and the UK to present their bids. Following the Argentinian presentation, Ronnie Browne announced that IHEEM would withdraw its bid in favour of Argentina, as there had never been a Congress in South America, and the bid confirmed the feasibility of holding a successful event in Buenos Aries. Members made clear they applauded the IHEEM decision, but expected the UK to bid for the 2016 event. For the next the Executive meeting, the Committee will include Yasushi Nagasawa as President (Japan), Ole Rist (Norway) as First Vice President, and Liliana Font (Argentina) as Second Vice President. Following the conclusion of business, members and their partners were invited to the Norwegian Embassy for the Ambassador to launch the next Congress, to be held in Norway during April 2012.
