-
-
WELCOME TO SEATS
WELCOME TO SEATS
President Of SEATS
Thailand
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a ten member regional block with a GDP of $2.8 trillion, a population of 650 million and a landmass covering more than 1.7 million square miles. It is characterised by much diversity in geography, culture and economic development. Due to this, health care provision and standards varies markedly across the region. Due to the high prevalence of smoking in this region there has been a dramatic increase in the last decade in incidence of chronic lung diseases like emphysema and lung cancer with many patients not having access to proper healthcare. Therefore there is an urgent need in the region to treat these medical conditions in terms of prevention, early diagnosis, treatment and training.
Though there are many regional cardiothoracic surgical societies which are addressing some of these needs there is to date no standalone general thoracic society which can focus exclusively on these healthcare issues. To address this concerns, key opinion leaders in the field of general thoracic Surgery from the various countries in the ASEAN region have established the inaugural South East Asian Thoracic Society or SEATS in December 2019 with the secretariat based in Singapore. It is the second only standalone regional thoracic society after European Society of Thoracic Surgery (ESTS) in the world.
The goal of the society would be primarily educational which will come under the SEATS academy which is the educational arm of the society. Its goals will be to establish a common standardised platform for the teaching of general thoracic surgery, research collaboration and formal standardised training of surgeons in all aspects of thoracic surgery. The training programmes will be run by experienced handpicked experts from the region.
The society would like to invite all cardiothoracic surgeons with interest in general thoracic surgery in the ASEAN and other regions to join the society and support the society’s educational and training programmes. Membership is a onetime flat fee only. The official website is www.seats10.org. We hope this website will act as an online platform to easily interact and exchange knowledge, surgical techniques, videos and updates among surgeons easily across the region. We welcome any feedback and other assistance which you may think may be beneficial to the society’s educational goals.
ASEAN countries are facing great healthcare challenges. Your educational, training and technical support to the society and its initiatives are very invaluable to us and the region. Although we are a small ‘startup’ society we hope this would be a start of a fruitful collaboration between ASEAN thoracic surgeons for the benefit of patients in the region.
Dr Punnarerk Thongcharoen