Dear Colleagues,

Greetings from Chennai

I would like to thank all the members who have been kind enough to participate in the IOA election process in large numbers and selecting me as your secretary for the next three years. I have served as Secretary and then President of the prestigious Tamil Nadu Orthopaedic Association and that rich experience would be helpful in managing our prestigious association.

My predecessor Dr H K T Raza has done enormous amount of work to streamline the association activities and I thank him on behalf of myself and all members of the association for his work.

Golden Jubilee Year 2005:

Last year was the Golden Jubilee year of the association. During this year under the guidance of our past President Dr Kanabar, a record 9380 operations were conducted to benefit the polio vitims. We thank and congratulate all the members who actively participated in this program (full report included)

Golden Jubilee Conference 2005:

The conference was conducted at Renaissance & Residence Hotel at Mumbai under the chairmanship of our past president Dr K H Sanchetti. Organizing Secretary Dr Ram Prabhoo and his team left no stones unturned to make the conference a success. We had the maximum attendance of our members participating in the conference apart from the spouses and trade delegates. The arrangements for the attendance of the scientific program were excellent and everybody appreciated the effort taken by the scientific committee in audiovisual arrangements.

There were 13 pre-conference workshops on various aspects including cadaveric workshop on spine. This was followed by Instructional course lectures on day 2. The CME program organized by the West Bengal Orthopaedic association was a great success in terms of maximum participation and with its content. The conference had some interesting non-orthopaedic guest lectures by Shiv Khera and Harsha bhogale. These lectures were nice, thought provoking and well appreciated by everybody. Symposia on Mass casuality, Death in orthopaedics and Naughty at Forty were well attended and most of the delegates could not find place to sit and enjoy the symposia. Overall the conference was a big success though some of the members were sore with certain aspects of arrangements for the dinner, banquet and faculty for various symposia and workshops. The future organizers of the IOA conferences should keep in their mind that the conference is a national one and there should be national representation of various academic programs of the conference.

Benevolent Fund : The incidental Charges Collected for IOACON 2004, has been deposited as corpus Fund, Members interested should contact Dr. R. K. Goyal.

Professional indemnity Scheme : The Response from the Members for this scheme is dismal. Only handful of Members had joined in this scheme. On paper this is a great scheme that will benefit the Members at state & District level. Those who are interested to join the scheme, kindly get the details from website www.ioaindia.org

New Gold medals: Dr. K. T. Dholaka, Gold Medal for overall Best Paper for Conference.

Dr. R. C. Rallan, Gold Medal for best paper on basic sciences have been started from Mumbai conference.

Fellowship : The last date for applying for inland & as well as foreign fellowship, is upto 15th may 2006. Members desirous of applying for various fellowships may visit our web site www.ioaindia.org to get the application forms and to know the Rules & Regulation of fellowships. Only one set of papers to be sent to be Respective fellowships Secretaries.

Silver Jubilee Commomeration Lecture 2006:

The last date for receipt of application for this is 30th June 2006 to the undersigned and the rules for the award are as follows:

Manuscripts are invited for the selection of candidates for this prestigious lecture. As you know this has been instituted to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of our association held in Mumbai in 1980 & is awarded to a member in recognition of his original unpublished work which is worthy of this award.

The award carries a silver salver & a cash award of rupees five thousand. No travelling or other allowance shall be paid.

Rules & Regulations:

1. The lecturer shall be a Life / full members or the Association without arrears.

2. It shall be his personal work, preferably done in India

3. The subject of the lecture should not have been published or presenterd in its present form elsewhere. He should certify to that effect.

4. Six copies of his work as full paper, which will not exceed 45 mins reading time with one copy of his biodata shall be submitted to the secretary before the stipulated date (30th June 2006)

5. A committee of five shall screen the papers submitted & the committee's decision is final. It should be sent to the following address:

Dr. R. H. Govardhan, T-39B, 8th Street, Anna Nagar, Chennai - 600040.
Ph : 91-44-26250545, Fax : 26262727, Mobile : 9841070545
E-mail : govardhan@vsnl.net

IOAICL 2006: IOACICL 2006 Jabalpur. Dr. Abhay Shrivatsava & Dr. H. K. T. Raza are organising this at Jabalpur.

The dates are 1st & 2nd April 2006. The Theme for the IOAICL 2006 is Newer development and Innovation in fracture management. Those who desire to attend IOAICL 2006 can contact Dr. Abhay Shrivatsava.

IOAICL 2007 : Satara orthopaedic society is conducting IOAICL 2007. Preparations for this event have already started. Date will be announced later.

Overseas Co-ordinators:

Now we have 5 overseas co-ordinatore

Dr. Sheo Tibrewal Dr. Elango, UK

Dr. Dilip Sengupta from USA

Dr. Sivanandam from Malaysia

Dr. Minnu Patel from Australia are the five members. Those who are interested may communicate with them for any help.

New sub-committees:

1. Osteoporosis Committee : Dr. S.M. Lakhotia has been nominated to go into details of Osteoporosis & he will be submitting his guidelines during the executive committee meeting of May 2006.

•  A Committee has been formed to give guidelines for professional charges for variousn orthopaedic procedures depending upon the level of seniority in the profession. It is known that more & more patients are availing insurance cover for their health needs. The insurance companies are making database of the professional charges levied by the Orthopaedic surgeons, for common orthopaedic operations. It is evident that insurance companies may dictate the professional charges for each orthopaedic procedures without considering the seniority, competance in surgery etc., This will affect all categories of Ortho surgeons. Hence earlier to the insurance companies the association wants to give the guidelines of professional charges for various othopaedic procedure depending on the seniority of the individual. Dr. J. Jethwa & Dr. Deepak Shah have been nominated to look in this aspect.

I was elected as secretary of the association during the IOACON 2005, Mumbai. During the executive committee meeting after the valedictory function. Dr. H K T Raza was requested to handover various files, documents and correspondence letters to me in a month's time, lam sorry to say that l am yet to receive any one of the them. This has cost hardship in compiling this newsletter, in executing my duties as the secretary of this prestigious association. I apologise to any factual errors in this newsletter and members will understand the reason for the same.

I wish to bring in more transparency in the working pattern of the association especially for selection of Fellowships, AA Mehta Gold Medal papers, Silver Jubilee Commemmoration Lecture etc., I invite constructive suggestions from senior members and colleagues.

Thanking you for sparing your valuable time

Sincerely yours,

Dr. R. H. Govardhan
Hony. Secretary - IOA