The international skeletal society outreach programme in Tunisia 2011

Abstract

An ISS outreach program was held in Tunisia in June 2011, in collaboration with the local organizers Prof. Najla Mnif, Chair of the Department of Radiology at Charles Nicolle Hospital in Tunis, and Prof. Hatem Rajhi, Vice Chair of the same institution. Charles Nicolle Hospital in Tunis is a general primary-care hospital and with 1010 beds, the largest in Tunisia. The hospital is named after the winner of the 1928 Nobel Prize for medicine; Charles Nicolle identified lice as a transmitter of epidemic typhus while working at the Pasteur Institute in Tunis. The ISS outreach meeting was held in Gammarth, which is in the north of Tunisia, 20 kilometers from Tunis, and is surrounded by a dense forest to the south, the Sebkha of Ariana to the west, and the Gulf of Tunis to the north and east, on June 24–25th 2011. Gammarth is only a few kilometers from the great ancient city of Carthage, one of the most historic places in Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site [1]. The meeting took place in the Carthage Palace Hotel. Initially, it was feared that the meeting might need to be postponed, following the national instability after the Tunisian revolution on January 14th 2011, but through the determination of the organizers of the meeting, everything went ahead as planned. On the first day of the meeting, introductory talks were given by Profs. Mnif and Rajhi, followed by an introduction to the outreach program and the ISS given by myself. Eight talks, mainly on bone tumors and further presentations on clinical cases of bone tumors, were given during the two-day meeting. Speakers included Prof. Daniel Vanel from Bologna, Italy and Ali Guermazi from Boston, USA, in French, and Dr. Frank Roemer from Augsburg, Germany, in English. The meeting was a huge success, with 78 enthusiastic participants. Of these, 76 were Tunisian, mostly from Tunis and Ariana, but also from other, more distant cities, such as Monastir, Bizerte, Sousse and Sfax. It was also a great pleasure to see international attendees, i.e. two Algerian colleagues who traveled all the way from Oran. Such high attendance was certainly thanks to Profs. Mnif and Rajhi, who had advertised the event very enthusiastically in advance. The attendees expressed their gratitude to the ISS for the opportunity to share knowledge with experts in the field of musculoskeletal imaging. Tunisia is a country with a highly diverse culture. After long periods of Ottoman and then French rules, large populations of Jews and Christians have lived among a Muslim majority for centuries [2]. As of 2009, the country had a total population of 10,272,000 and a life expectancy of 73 years for men and 77 years for women. Total expenditure on health per capita was $524; spending on health as a percentage of GDP was 6.2 % [3]. The living standards of the population in general are modest. The country’s national health system is purported to provide nearly all of its population with access to medical care [2]. However, in reality, the public healthcare system only covers expenditures for healthcare services delivered at public institutions, which A. Guermazi (*) Department of Radiology, Boston University School of Medicine, 820 Harrison Avenue, FGH Building 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02118, USA e-mail: guermazi@bu.edu