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Spine Society of West Bengal

From President Desk

Dr Saumyajit Basu

Welcoming you all from the President’s desk is a bit of a challenge, considering the current menace of the pandemic. The saga of death and disasters continues – the city of joy is in an unprecedented tsunami of tragic tales and as the woes of people rides the waves of cursed existence, we have to cling together for better days ahead.

SSWB is a very closely knit society of surgeons, dedicated to better spine care and this motto is what keeps us all going. During the tenure of my Presidency, I will try to focus on the following, so as to deliver a road map for future leaders.

  1. Academic Excellence
    We have been successfully running quite a few programs of excellent academic content and wish to consolidate them further
    1. Quarterly Clinical Meetings
      Usually topic based - 4 in a year with one clubbed together with the WBOACON
    2. PG Teaching Program
      Usually 2 in a year - dedicated to the MS Orthopedics post graduate trainees
    3. Short Seminars in Spine
      Usually, 4 to 6 in a year – with one non-spine specialist invited to talk on a topic related to spine with interactive case discussions
  2. Fellowship Program
    We have started this a couple of years back with one month of traveling observership to 3 or 4 hospitals with a high volume of spinal surgeries. We need to increase the number of such fellowship and streamline the content.
  3. Sponsorship
    We are in the process of acquiring new sponsors for various events and all members may please come forwards for this cause
  4. Office Address
    We need to finalize the office address early enough so that getting a GST number becomes easier and various administrative issues can be put in order
  5. Our own conference
    This has been a dream till now - we were all set to materialize on this issue within this year-end. However, the second wave of COVID has put all efforts on the back stage. We hope to start thinking about it as soon as the situation improves and options of holding physical meetings become more realistic.
    In this context I would like to mention that we had a meeting with the Executive Committee of APSS regarding the Kolkata APSS meeting scheduled in June 2022. The consensus was to wait for at least 2 months before a final decision regarding this is taken. The committee will further meet for deciding on whether we go ahead with an online or a hybrid meeting or cancel it all together. If it is cancelled, we will be allowed to bid for it in 2024 because the APSS Annual Meeting of 2023 is already booked with SpineWeek, Melbourne, which has been rescheduled in 2023.

With these few words, I am sure that we will wake up to a new dawn of academic excellence through physical meetings and will take the mantle of SSWB into a new horizon of best clinical practice. If we could have withstood so many challenges down the corridors of history, there is no reason why we should not be able to combat the current threat of COVID as a united community of dedicated spine surgeons.

LONG LIVE SSWB!

Dr Saumyajit Basu
MS)orth)/DNB)orth)/FRCSEd
Dated 23rd May 2021