6 ^th Asian Congress of Urology 31 December 2002

850 urologists from 45 countries participated in the above Congress which was held for the first time in Malaysia. The Congress was organised by the Malaysian Urological Association in association with the Urological Association of Asia (UAA). It has obviously grown from the smaller gatherings of previous years in Bangkok, Singapore and Beijing. The local organising chairman was Dr Sahabudin Raja Mohamed who was elected as the new President of the UAA. The Secretary of the Malaysian Urological Association, Dr Rohan Malek was elected by the UAA Council to become the new Director of the Asian School of Urology, taking over Prof. Pitchai of Thailand. The highlight of the Congress was a pre-congress event which showed live surgery via video cyber conferencing linking Mainz hospital in Frankfurt, St Mary's Hospital London and Hospital Kuala Lumpur. As the host country, the Institute of Urology & Nephrology in Kuala Lumpur was the main venue for the pre and post congress surgical workshops. The Institute has an audio visual centre which allows it to be linked up with the rest of the world. The Malaysian Urological Association also took the opportunity to launch its landmark publication, viz “The History of Urology In Malaysia”. The Tourism Ministry of Malaysia hosted the Cultural Night in the garden of the famous Twin Tower of Kuala Lumpur. The Gala Dinner was graced by none other than the King of Malaysia.

“Urology in the IT era” is a most fitting theme for the Congress, as Malaysia aims to be the Multimedia Super Corridor of the East. The scientific program was a splendid combination of many lectures by Asian and international speakers. There were symposia of Asian speakers or Asian topics including a symposia under the auspicious of FAUA, Federation of Asian Urological Associations. All the lectures were presented only in a digital format, making it possible to produce CDs for all the events as well as to web cast the entire proceedings of the Congress ( http://www.meditech.co.uk ). It is anticipated that the Asian School of Urology will take it from here and make available on the internet the Malaysian Board of Urology advanced urology courses which were conducted on an average about 6 times a year in Malaysia. The Ministry of Health in none other than the Minister of Health himself showed a keen interest and support for the activities of the Asian urologists. The Ministry of Health has agreed in principle to sponsor a fellowship program and has allocated a budget for fellows to be accepted from Asian countries to Malaysia.

An Asian School of Urology website based in KL is also being planned so that all the activities of Asian urology can be circulated quickly to all the Asian urologists. The meeting also re-elected Dr K T Foo of the Singapore General Hospital as the Secretary General of the UAA. The UAA council had conveyed through Dr K T Foo that the Asian School of Urology will be located in Malaysia for a period of 4 years initially.

The almost 400 abstracts from the 6 ^th Congress of Urology were published in the prestigious indexed International Journal of Urology,(2002, Vol 9 suppl.) published by Blackwell Publishing. The scientific sessions were grouped roughly into interest topics for each day, namely, on the 1 ^st day, ED; Fertility Research BPH on the 2 ^nd day; Incontinence Infection, Uro-oncology on the 3 ^rd day; and on the 4 ^th day, to cover the other topics of Stone Disease, Transplantation, Reconstructive & Paediatric Urology, and Transplantation. In addition to the usual State of Art lectures and various trade sponsored symposia (3 teas and 3 lunches), there was an Asian Forum running concurrently on each day. A master class session was also held on each day to cover Incontinence, Uro-oncology and Endourology respectively. The whole spectrum of free papers on the various topics were presented and the quality of the papers reflected the tremendous amount of clinical material available in Asia. There was also considerable basic as well as clinical research being undertaken in Asia. An authoritative half-hour session of “Highlights” of the previous day was held on the first session of each day. A wide range of Exhibitors took up 73 booths.

The Asian Congress of Urology is now set to be one of the major regional urological meetings on par with the American and European urological meetings. The next meeting is scheduled to be from 31.10.2004 to 4.11.2004 in Hong Kong. The local organising chairman is Dr Bill Wong, Consultant Urologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong (email: billwong@graduate.hku.hk ).