The First International Symposium on Maritime Health - The history of the International Symposia
In the seventies and eighties there were two series of maritime medical meeting was arranged in Europe, one in Eastern Europe and the other in Western Europe. In 1989 these two were held during the same year, both meetings gathering specialists from all over the world. In the later symposium in Gdynia participants agreed to combine the two meetings into one to avoid unnecessary expenditure of time and money and to increase the international co-operation.
There was some clear opposition among some Western doctors against joining the meetings. The Western meetings were wanted to keep as a closed, private club-meetings participation being only by invitation.
The seas are open to everyone, maritime medicine must be open to everybody, too.
The joint symposium, the International Symposium on Maritime Health was organised by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Turku, Finland on 5-9 June 1991. The joining of the two meetings happened in
same year when the iron curtain between West and East Europe was withdrawn. Thus the decision done two years before was proven to be correct. The joint symposium was a start to a real and equal co-operation between all the people interested in maritime health and having the joint goal, better health and safety of sailors in the world.
A new Symposia will be arranged every second year, the really international maritime health association, IMHA has been established and medical persons have been more active than before within the work of other international organisation such like WHO, ILO, IMO etc.
The First International Symposium on Maritime Health in Turku, Finland in co-operation with WHO, ILO, IMO and ICOH. There were 86 participants from all over the world. There were no parallel session in the Symposium, so all the participants had possibility to follow all the presentations. The language was English without simultaneous interpretation. The main topics were:
- Occupational health care of seafarers
- Health examinations of seafarers
- Occupational health hazards and their prevention on board ship
- Diseases and accidents on board ship, dental problems of seafarers
- Miscellaneous papers
- The International Society on Maritime Health
There were 31 scientific presentations and 12 posters. During the Symposium the discussions to establish an International Society on maritime health were started. The idea was. however, too new for the participants and 4 more years were needed to mature the idea to start the IMHA in Oslo in 1995.
The Symposium got much positive feedback from the participants both on the scientific as well as the social programme. All the papers have been publishes in the proceedings (ISBN 951-801-885-5)
Heikki Saarni
heikki.saarni@occuphealth.fi