Straubing / Germany, December 2005

Dear friends,

As the newly elected President of the ISC, I wish everyone my best wishes during this holiday season and also wish everyone well - in health and spirit. On behalf of the ISC I thank all those people who have made their contributions (small or large) to the activities of the society.

The international nature of the ISC means that the officers serving the society come from around the globe. The ISC should be cost-effective in its management and this has brought about changes in the ISC constitution this year to meet this requirement. The Executive committee will be able to function more effectively using technology available and therefore reduce costs.

I would just like to update members of some of the activities of the Society in 2005.

People

The President and some members of the Executive Committee ended their term of office in June and new ones appointed or elected and approved at the Council meeting held in Manila. The following will serve on the Executive Committee to 2007.

Kurt G Naber (Germany) - President
Tetsuro Matsumoto (Japan) - Vice-President
Teresita Mazzei (Italy) - Secretary-General
Erdal Akalin (Turkey) - Hon Treasurer
Jean-Claude Pechere (Switzerland) - Immediate Past-President
George L Drusano (USA)
Ronald Feld (Canada)
Alasdair Geddes (UK)
Helen Giamarellou (Greece)
Eduardo Gotuzzo (Peru)
Ian Gould (UK)
David Hooper (USA)
Victor KE Lim (Malaysia)
Bernard Rouveix (France)
Bernhard Ruf (Germany) - President 25th ICC
Wing-Hong Seto (Hong Kong)

Morimasa Yagisawa (Japan) will serve as Executive Director of the ISC from his office in Tokyo. Faridah Moosdeen will retire after having been with the ISC in various capacities since 1989, due to ill-health. The ISC will close the office in London and the ISC secretariat will be in Aberdeen under Fiona MacKenzie who will be the Executive Secretary. Ian Gould on the EC will also serve as the Acting Treasurer, in charge of the financial affairs in the UK.

The Editorship of the ISC Journal was taken over by Alasdair Geddes (Birmingham) at the beginning of the year. Section-editors will be appointed to smoothen the process of paper reviews. The journal relies on quite a large group of reviewers (too many to mention) and we are grateful.

We say good-bye to two of our beloved members who contributed much to the Society. Leonid Stratchounski (Russia) passed away tragically in May and David Williams passed away after a short illness in July. David worked tirelessly for the ISC during his 27 years with the Society, and Leonid made much contribution to develop antimicrobial chemotherapy in Eastern Europe. We will sorely miss them.

ISC meetings

ISC conducted the 24th ICC with the Philippine Society of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases as host. Although the attendance at the meeting was as many as the 23rd ICC in Durban, the programme was good it was a successful outcome. We thank all the people involved in making the congress successful under the Presidency of Thelma Tupasi.

Another meeting which the ISC held together with the Turkish Society of Chemotherapy was the Second International Congress of Cancer Therapeutics held in Istanbul in November, continuing from the first in Florence. This was also another successful meeting in line with ISC-Cancer, under the Presidency of Bülent Berkada. There was a decision that this congress should continue annually; the next meeting will be held in Tokyo from 6-8 December 2006.

The Disease Management Series (DMS) meetings that ISC conducted were the 'Second Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP)' held in Montreal, Canada in September and the 'Appropriate use of antimicrobials in hospitals and the community' held in Bled, Slovenia in October, chaired by Bojana Beovic. Both meetings were also well attended. In addition ISC co-operated in other meetings, such as the 1st Aral Conference on Antimicrobial Chemotherapy in Ekaterinburg, Russia, the 2nd Conference of the Kosovo Society of Chemotherapy in Prishtina, Kosovo, and the 7th European Congress for Chemotherapy and Infection in Florence, Italy. All three meetings took place in October.

Publication

The International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents will enter a new era in 2006. All submissions of papers and the way they are processed will be done electronically (i.e. on-line). We hope that papers can be peer-reviewed, processed and published more quickly. Since the ISC took over the IJAA (with IF = 0.847 in 1998), within the six years the journal can stand proud with other journals in the same category (IF 2.064 in 2004). There is definitely more scope for improvement.

Papers should be submitted electronically via the journal's Author Gateway http://authors.elsevier.com/issn/09248579. This address will also be available on the ISC website. The Editorial office will be based at the publishers' office in Oxford, UK.

Some outlook for 2006 and beyond

ISC will be involved in about 10 meetings organised by affiliated societies, either under the auspices or organised within DMS meetings. All meetings and societies involved can be found on the ISC website (www.ischemo.org)

• 17-20 April 2006 Tunis, Tunisia | 4th Arab Symposium on Prudent Use of Antimicrobials
• 4-6 May 2006 Varna, Bulgaria | Pharmacotherapy in Urology (DMS)
• 23-24 June 2006 Weimar, Germany | Urinary tract infections (DMS)
• 25-26 June 2006 Catania, Italy | 15th Mediterranean Congress of Chemotherapy
• 14-16 Sept 2006 St. Petersburg, Russia | Infections emerging in hospital (DMS)
• 12-14 Oct 2006 Khabarovsk, Russia | Far East Russian conference on antimicrobial
  chemotherapy
• 25-28 Oct 2006 Budapest, Hungary | 8th European Congress of Chemotherapy and Infection
• 3-6 Dec 2006 Fukuoka, Japan | 10th Western Pacific Congress of Chemotherapy
• 6-8 Dec 2006 Tokyo, Japan | 3rd International Conference on Cancer Therapeutics
• 2006 Greece | Treatment of brucellosis (DMS)

And in 2007 the big event will be the combined Congress of 17th ECCMID & 25th ICC in Munich, 31 March - 3 April (www.eccmid-icc.org)

My wish for 2006 would be to meet as many of you as possible at any of these exciting meetings to discuss scientific problems and enjoy the friendship.