President's Message

July, 3 2008

This is the first of regular updates (hopefully monthly) from me as your new President to keep the membership as informed as it can be of activities of the board and other developments of interest to the TIAFT members. I would like to first of all also thank the organisers (Dr Patrick Mura and his colleagues), the French toxicology society (SFTA) and the Society of Hair Testing (SoHT) for running a wonderful meeting in Martinique. The quality of the presentations was very high and a tribute to the delegates who attended. No doubt some pictures will appear on the web page soon.
I would like to thank Dr. Pascal Kintz for his term as president and the past executive committee for a number of significant advances the association has made in the last 3 years. This includes spreading TIAFT into the developing world. I am also very keen to continue this development.
The success of the Latin American countries in holding annual scientific meetings is testament to this after TIAFT had given initial impetus and support for the first meetings in La Plata, Santiago and Bogota. Indeed they will be holding their 4th meeting in Buenos Aires in November 3-7, 2008. I would like to encourage as many of you as possible to attend. Dr Oscar Locani and his team have been working very hard to make this a success.
The board meeting in Beijing that was totally funded by the Chinese was a hugh success (tribute to Prof Liu Yao and to Dr Heesun Chung from the board to facilitate this), and the board meeting in 2007 in Singapore illustrated the interest in Asia and complements the already strong membership in Japan and Korea. This also reflects the developments occurring in many developing Asian economies.
I look forward to working with you and the new board to continue this good work.
I would like to revisit the committees and their agendas, and see what we can do to best represent the interests of the members.
I would like to improve the Bulletin and with the help of the editor and the editorial committee to increase its scientific content to make it a more useful resource particularly for members of the developing world who do not have much of the way of library resources. This would go hand in hand with our web content of toxicology information that is now becoming somewhat out dated.
I would also would like the membership to have more of a say in what TIAFT does by holding later this year a survey for members to comment on what we do (on the board) and what TIAFT should be offering its members. We could do this by a web based approach as well as through the Bulletin and by e-mail.
It is a great honour to become president of TIAFT. Thank you all for the opportunity to lead TIAFT over the coming 3 years. I hope we cannot only grow TIAFT but also become as relevant as we can be to our members.
I will look forward to the coming years meeting; we already are seeing advanced organisation for the next meetings in Geneva and Bonn. Christian Staub and Marc Augsburger have already made great preparations for the next meeting. See you all in Geneva.

Olaf H. Drummer PhD(med) ARCPA MRACI CChem
Head (Forensic & Scientific Services)
Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine
Adjunct Professor,
Department of Forensic Medicine, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine
Monash University, 57-83 Kavanagh Street, Southbank, 3006, AUSTRALIA
e-mail: olaf@vifm.org