About SICOT
SICOT Friendship Nations
Although SICOT is a global Society with an individual membership, we see an absolute need for a closer relationship with National Orthopaedic Societies on the one hand and International Subspecialty Societies on the other. For the latter, we want to establish cooperation as easily as possible to encourage common projects and to support joint meetings.
Combined meetings seem to be the key to fruitful partnerships between us and other scientific societies. To this end, we had an annual meeting together with the Royal College of Orthopaedic Surgeons of Thailand (RCOST) in 2009, and future annual meetings are being planned and organised with the Swedish Orthopaedic Society (SOF) in 2010 and the Brazilian Orthopaedic Society (SBOT) in 2014.
The SICOT Officers try to attend the annual meetings of selected national societies and invite Presidents of national and subspecialty societies to SICOT meetings. These personal contacts seem to us an important step towards a lively and successful communication to begin the planning of common projects.
This year, we are starting a new partnership campaign called "Friendship Nations", whereby specific nations will be honoured at our annual meetings. The Officers of the National Society will have a place of honour during the meetings. A number of privileges will be arranged for them and for the participants of the selected Nation. From 2010 onwards, additional events are planned to take place before the meeting.
The 2009 Friendship Nation in Pattaya, Thailand, was India; the following Nation to be honoured at the Gothenburg Conference in 2010 will be Japan; and for the meeting in 2011 in Prague, we are pleased to announce that China has accepted to become a Friendship Nation of SICOT. SICOT welcomes the Pan Arab Orthopaedic Association (PAOA) as Friendship Society in 2012.
We hope that this continuous close communication will help all of us reach some of our common goals, for example, providing the best possible care to our patients, assuring a sound, continuing education during the entire professional life of a surgeon and increasing global awareness of and support for research programmes in the musculoskeletal field.
Jochen Eulert
Secretary General