RAMA Ohio

I would like to thank you for coming and most importantly for your current and future support of the Russian American Medical Association! It has been five years since the RAMA was established here in Ohio. The 5th National meeting of RAMA took place in Chicago in October of this year. The meeting, its scientific and social program confirmed that the idea of the Association is both viable and productive.

This Association was established as a group of Russian-speaking medical professionals living mostly in the United States. I think the time is coming when the name of Russian American Medical Association should mean something slightly different - a live, open and well functioning bridge connecting medical professionals in Russia and America. Creation of such a unified professional "virtual" space available for doctors, students, nurses, and allied medical professionals and, most importantly, for the patients is another contemporary goal of this Association.

RAMA-Ohio has taken a lead in 2007 among the local chapters in developing projects that will fundamentally change the status and prospective of the entire Association. "Faces of Hope" Project is one of them and certainly the most important one. The essence of the project is to raise funds to provide care for the patients with life-threatening diseases who cannot get appropriate treatment in their own countries - Russia and FSU. To promote the idea of the "Faces of Hope", we will hold a fund raising event in the Spring of 2008. I want to personally invite all of you to come to that function and to support the Project! I want to use this opportunity to ask for your ideas on how to ensure this project's success.

Later in 2008 we plan to open another project. International Children's Heart Foundation and RAMA establish a cooperative mission to the city of Kemerovo, Siberia. A group of physicians and nurses will travel to Kemerovo to perform open-heart surgery on children with congenital heart disease, and share the experience in this complicated specialty with the cardiologists and surgeons in Siberia.

These are only few of the RAMA-Ohio projects. We think we can do a lot more with the continuing support of our current and future members and with the help of our sponsors.

Thank you all for coming here this evening! Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!


On behalf of the Ohio Chapter of the Russian American Medical Association

Yakov Elgudin, MD, PhD
President
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