Tasmania is this weekend playing host to 300 delegates attending the 24th Annual Australasian Military Medicine Association (AMMA) Conference.
AMMA is an independent organisation of health professionals with the objectives of promoting the study and research of military medicine and veteran’s health. The AMMA Conference is the premier military medicine event in Australasia and delegates have come from around Australia and New Zealand to attend.
Today, I was honoured to be invited to open the Conference at the Hotel Grand Chancellor and welcome guests to Tasmania on behalf of the State Government. Tourism is of course one of Tasmania’s key markets so it is always pleasing when organisers select Tasmania as their conference destination of choice.
Hobart business owner Paula Leishman, whose company will be managing the conference, says that the conference also provides a great opportunity for Tasmania to reinforce itself as an international conferencing location. “Each time that Hobart hosts an event like the Australasian Military Medicine Association conference, it draws new interstate and international visitors to the city and places the state at the forefront of people’s minds as a holiday and business destination.”
The theme for this year is the Anzac Legacy recognising the sacrifices our serving men, women and their families made 100 years ago and continue to do so today. From a medical standpoint, World War One was a gruesome affair. Australia had over 60 000 casualties and a further 155 000 wounded. However, some good that came from World War One was the advances in orthopaedics, neurosurgery, plastic surgery and psychiatry. These practices were later used to treat the civilian population and continue to be used today.
Conference attendees will attend sessions covering: traumas; cooperation in disasters; post-traumatic stress disorder, resilience, impact of combat on women and veterans’ health.
The Conference will see two international keynote speakers present to the delegates: Dr David R King and Dr Kathy Magruder PhD. Dr King is an academic attending trauma and acute care surgeon at the Masachusetts General Hospital Trauma Centre. Dr Kathy Magruder works, and is a tenured Professor, in the Departments of Psychiatry and Public Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina where she also serves as Director of the Office of Research Integrity.
I wish all conference attendees a successful and enjoyable conference, and I hope that they see and sample the many delights Tasmania has to offer.
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