International Journal of Leprosy and other Mycobacterial Diseases

• Volume 57(1 Suppl 1) , Number 1
• Page: 273–4

17 September 1988 The Hague, The Netherlands

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The meeting was opened with brief remarks by the new President of the International Leprosy Association (ILA) Dr. Wayne M. Meyers, and proceeded without adopting a formal agenda.

Items of Discussion:

1. Language(s) of the Congress

In view of the overwhelming predominance of English, both in terms of papers submitted as well as of the participants at the XIII Congress just ended, the majority of the Council seemed in favor of the idea of adopting English as the only official language at the next Congress. However, some caution was voiced by a number of people, especially over the danger of preselection of potential Congress participants. Out of three possible alternatives-status quo (3 official languages); English only; partial shift (3 languages for the Opening and Closing ceremonies as well as some workshops but otherwise English only) -the Council agreed to adopt the last one for the next Congress.

The papers to be presented and their abstracts should be in English only, but poster presentations could be in any of the three languages.

2. The possibility of regional ILA meetings between Congresses was proposed, and some Council members seemed to favor this idea, especially those from the Asian region. The reason cited was to give ILA members some opportunities for possible activities within the region under ILA sponsorship, which might possibly be linked to the enlargement of the ILA membership by more field-oriented "applied" leprologists. The Secretary expressed a willingness to explore the possibility of having such a meeting, at least in the Asian region, in 1990 on a trail basis. Further consultations are necessary for action.

3. ILA membership

The desirability of enlarging individual membership was expressed and some suggestions were offered. The one most promising seems to be the idea to separate the membership fee from the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEPROSY subscription fee, especially if the former could be set at US$1020 a year and possibly provide some "newsletter" type publications for them. No decision was made but the matter is likely to be explored further before the next Congress.

4. Official letters of thanks/apologies to the sponsors of the five candidate venues of the next Congress

It was agreed that letters will be written and sent, with signatures of both the past and present Presidents, Prof. M. F. Lechat and Dr. W. M. Meyers, to those key people involved at each of the sites.

5. Rules/Criteria for choosing the Congress venue

Both Prof. Lechat and Dr. Thangaraj made some rules/criteria for their own use, and they will be handed over to and adopted by the new team of Officers for future use.

6. Publications of the XIII Congress

a) Abstracts: An irregularity concerning the publication distributed at the present Congress was pointed out. The Editor is going to explore the various possibilities of publishing enough copies of the abstracts for those subscribers who did not attend the Congress by discussing the matter with an ILEP member involved.

b) Proceedings: The Council agreed that there is no need nor justification for publishing the full proceedings of the Congress since the majority of those papers worth publishing are likely to find their way into various scientific journals, including the IJL.

c) State-of-the-art lectures and recommendations of the pre-Congress workshops will be published in one of the IJL issues in the near future.

The President closed the Council meeting without setting a date for the next meeting, which is likely to be an ad hoc one at the occasion of a leprosy meeting sponsored by someone other than the ILA.

Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Yo Yuasa
Dr. Y. Yuasa

Secretary