Dear colleagues, It is both an honor a challenge for me to take over as President of the Society from this year: honor because I am following my very dear colleague and senior, Prof Wasim Jafri, and a challenge because we have to take our Society to the next level.

As you all would know, we came into being five years when a need for a professional and a professionally run forum for people working in liver diseases was felt. Our stated vision was to prevent and cure liver diseases and create awareness among clinicians and masses, and our mission remains to advance the science and practice of hepatology, thereby promoting health and care of patients. I hope you will agree with me that even in our early years of existence, we have managed to meet our aspirations to a great extent. We have now successfully held five well attended Annual Meetings, a number of Single Topic Meetings and the 6th APASL Single Topic Conference on Acute Liver Failure in 2009. In addition, our members have continued to contribute in the print and electronic media for educating the masses in the early recognition, prevention and treatment of a wide variety of liver diseases.

However over the coming years we have a lot of work cut out for us. We need to increase the impact of our society further by increasing our membership, by penetrating deeper into the rural areas of country with public awareness campaigns and by establishing and supporting a research portfolio in liver diseases. We also need to further increase our international liaisons so that we can represent Pakistan’s perspective more forcefully in the international forums.

In all these endeavors I will surely need the help and support of our committed members, and I will be contacting you all to help fulfill many of these goals.

With my best regards,

 

Dr. Saeed S. Hamid
President, PSSLD
MBBS,  FRCP, FRCPI, FACP, FACG. 
The Ibn-e-Sina Chair and Professor
Department of Medicine
The Aga Khan University & Hospital
Karachi - 74800
Phones: 34864661/ 34864660
Fax: ++92-21 34934294
Email: saeed.hamid@aku.edu