Message of the President

04 April 2017

    At the recent House of Delegates Meeting held in Seoul, South Korea I had the honour to be elected as the President of the Asia & South Pacific Ostomy Association for the next three years. I view this as a great honour and a task that I shall endeavour to carry out to the best of my ability.

    There are many things that need to be addressed in the future and It is important that we have in place policies that if followed through will eventually bring free Ostomy supplies and free STN nurses to all Ostomates in all countries. This may be hard and may take time but if we do not do the work now then we will be denied forever. It is important that all three sectors work in harmony, medical, Ostomate, and supply companies. As a combined group we can do far more than anyone group can do by themselves.

    I believe that we need to have a strong Executive within the ASPOA in order to have a voice that will be heard by the Govt's of the countries within our region. We need to be able to work in close harmony with the supply companies to ensure that the best products are made available for the Ostomates in each country. This means that we need to have Ostomates on the Executive who have a range of talents from business to health. I would like to think that the work that we started in Seoul with our first ever training session will just be the first of many in the future and that what was presented will be of value and shared around to those who need it. I feel honoured to have Dr Harikesh Bush as acting Vice President, Shiv Raj Kapur as Treasurer and Ronaldo Lora as Secretary and the voting process for the new Fifth Member will be held shortly as arranged in Seoul at the House of Delegates meeting. I would like to say goodbye to Barry Maughan who has left the Executive, his work has been invaluable not just to the ASPOA Executive but to all Ostomates and he will be sorely missed.

    In Seoul, Barry was awarded the Supreme honour of the Archie Vinitsky Award by Dr Harikesh Bush on behalf of the ASPOA and the IOA, something which he well deserved.

    We will be holding the next World Ostomy Day in October of 2018 and this time around it has fallen to the Asia & South Pacific region to organise this and it is my intention that we should lead the world in this promotion which will require work and commitment from us all.

    The Executive are in the process of rewriting our Strategic Plan in order to take the association not just into the next three years but to set plans in place that will serve us all for years to come.

    In Seoul it was decided that the 4th House of Delegates meeting will be held in Delhi India in November 2020 and those associations who for whatever reason were not able to attend in Seoul should start to work towards joining us all in Delhi.

    I believe that we have a great tool for learning in our web site, Ronaldo will be doing some work on it shortly to update it and we will be loading things like the President, Secretary and Treasurer training program onto it for all to use.

    I would like to propose to all associations adopt the pledge of commitment to look for possible young professionals who can spearhead the 20/40 program in all countries in our region that has been put together by Ronaldo and will be on the web site or can be obtained by email from Ronaldo Lora as we need to have more young Ostomates attending the Delhi conference and we need to start looking now.


Richard B. McNair
President
Asia & South Pacific Ostomy Association