CIOMR French Presidency 2008-2010 

As the new French Presidency has just started at the end of the CIOMR congress in Istanbul, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Filip Stragier for his hard work and dedication as President over the last 2 years. Filip  continued the work initiated by Peter Knudsen (2002-2004) and Marcia Quinn (2004-2006).

Over the last few years CIOMR has gained an international recognition as a representative association of the Reserve Medical Officers. The French Presidency will continue in this direction and will reinforce the CIOR relationship with the new CIOR Dutch Presidency. We will continue to promote CIOMR through our different activities like official reports to COMEDS, JMC for instance, periodic release of a newsletter, improvement of our internet website. The French Presidency will also increase the recognition internally and at the CIOR level of the work of our various committees.

The set up of the First Aid Competition and the First Aid guide allow us to standardize 1st aid techniques to wounded soldiers and evaluate the outcome  of them through the Competition. We would like to take here the opportunity to thank all the great work of the 1st Aid committee. Reservists returning from foreign missions have taught us that they were not always well trained enough to serve abroad. Therefore it seemed critical to us to start addressing this significant matter therefore CIOMR has started to work on “Medical issues in Operations”. Through the “Medical Operational Committee” we will analyze the needs of Officers going into operations and come back with a set of pragmatic recommendations that we hopefully can implement in our respective countries.

We will initiate workshops around a number of Operational Medical issues at the next Brussels Meeting and subsequently at the next CIOMR summer meeting in Bulgaria. We would like to promote the outcome of these sessions at the CIOR Symposium and other relevant avenues in order to promote our international expertise.

Scientific sessions will be further developed and should be the mirror of our CIOMR expertise. CME accreditation has helped us to gain recognition of our work on an international basis. We now need to go beyond this and have the goal for our abstracts to be accepted in international publications peers reviewed.

We think this program is fairly ambitious but we are also aware that nothing can be done without your active participation in our various activities. We want to be pragmatic for the next 2 years and please let me know when this won’t be the case anymore. We therefore thank you in advance for your level of pro-activity without which nothing can be achieved. We count on you all and above all we welcome to be challenged in a constructive manner allowing us to reach higher ceilings…

See you all full of energy in Brussels!

Ltcol PELLETIER Bruno

President CIOMR