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Second
National Seminar in Nuclear Medicine
The seminar was officially opened by Tan Sri Dato' Dr. Abu Bakar Sulaiman, the Director General of Health on 23 November. It was attended by more than 100 participants comprising doctors from public as well as private medical centers, university professors, researchers, pharmacists, physicists, technologists, and students. The main objective of the seminar is to expose participants on the current and future trend in diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine. It featured seven plenary papers from invited local and foreign speakers (USA, UK, and Japan) covering topics ranging from Positron Emission Tomography (PET), to outlook on nuclear medicine in Malaysia in the next millennium, and progress in Japan. These were among the 26 papers presented in the seminar that comprised five sessions. There were four poster papers. The seminar secretariat will later publish the proceeding of the seminar. The seminar ended with a panel discussion with Dr. Nahrul Khair Alang Md. Rashid (MINT/MNS) chairing the five panelists: Dr. Lee Boon Nang (Hospital Kuala Lumpur), Dr. Mohamed Ali Abd. Khader (Hospital Pulau Pinang), Mr. Lewis Carroll (Carroll-Ramsey Associates, USA), Prof. R.J. Ott (Royal Marsden Hospital, UK), and Prof. Yoshiharu Yonekura (Fukui Medical University, Japan). Response from participants was very encouraging. Human resource, status of nuclear medicine vis-a-vis other specialty areas, lack of critical mass, and coordination between various players in nuclear medicine appeared to be some of the issues related to the growth of nuclear medicine in Malaysia. The seminar concluded that a national-level working group on nuclear medicine need to be established to study and recommend an action plan and strategy to address these issues. It was also agreed in principle that the interval between seminars be shortened to two years - hence the third seminar is scheduled to be held in the year 2001. The First National Seminar in Nuclear Medicine was held in 1988. |