Invitation

Dear Friends and Colleagues

As Chair of the Infection Control Africa Network (ICAN), it is my great pleasure to invite you to the Fourth ICAN African Conference to be held at the Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa  from the 27th to 29th November, 2012. This year, we decided to move away from the more peaceful rural settings of Stellenbosch wine estates to the vibrant heart of Cape Town- the Waterfront!

The 3rd Conference in Namibia 2011, was a great success, extremely well organised and supported by the Namibian Government- the opening address was given by the National Minister of Health, Namibia. It is becoming evident that the ICAN conferences are growing from strength to strength with enormous support from the WHO, both Africa and Headquarters. There were several exciting suggestions from the membership which have been incorporated into the 2012 programme. I do hope there will be something for everyone both socially and scientifically, and we encourage you to network, set up links and make new friends and meet old ones in Cape Town.

There will be three world class keynote speakers: Dr David Livermore (UK), Dr Michael Tapper (USA) and Prof Meredith Minkler (USA) on antibiotics resistance, tuberculosis and community based participatory research respectively.  There will be parallel sessions both in the morning and the afternoon, as well as free communications.

 You are invited to submit abstracts based on original scientific research; papers from Africa will be given priority but all abstracts are welcome- both for oral presentation and poster sessions. It is possible that bursaries may be made available for some promising young scientists so please visit the website for information. Selected papers will be published in Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control (ARIC), a newly launched open access journal. We welcome industry to actively participate- meet scientists from Africa and become involved in good IPC practices.

There are three Meet- the- Expert lectures and one of these has been set up in memory of Yves Chartier (WHO) whose untimely accidental death left the entire community who worked with healthcare waste management, shocked. It shall be called the Yves Chartier Memorial Lecture - this year to be delivered by Prof Babacar Ndoye from Senegal.

As requested by our membership, the 26th Nov, 2012 will be a refresher or training day preceding the start of the main conference. There will be four parallel sessions on topics chosen by the membership and will be run by experts in their field.  In keeping with the ethos of ICAN, it will give the audience an opportunity to interact closely with their tutors and discuss professional matters towards setting up working groups under the ICAN umbrella.

The venue will be the new, state of the art conference facility situated in the heart of the Waterfront- the challenge will be to keep the scientific programme interesting enough to entice the participants away from the shopping!

On behalf of ICAN we extend a warm welcome to you- join us in Cape Town – 26th to 29th Nov 2012!

Prof Shaheen Mehtar Chair ICAN www.ICANetwork.co.za