Dear TPAA members, Families and Friends,
I hope everyone had a wonderful time during the Christmas and New Year Celebration.
The 2012 Medical Mission in Nakhon Si Thammarat will focus on assisting and sharing of educational and clinical experiences with our local colleagues and hospitals. We have raised enough funds to purchase for them, several needed essential equipments. We have also been able to secure several donated equipments with the help from our members, families and friends.
The Rural School Project is enjoying a very successful fundraising drive and will have significant impact in terms of assistance that we will be able to provide to the schools in the rural area of Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Our CME seminar, at Krabi, in joint cooperation with Walailak University is aimed to update TPAA members on the current thinking and treatment of common diseases. We have also extended the invitation, at no cost, to the local physicians from the surrounding provinces.
Our social function will feature some local talents as well as artists that are well-known to us. We hope that everyone will enjoy these fun-filled events.
Our Post-Convention Tour to Bali is something that, for many of us, is long overdue. Those that can join the tour will be treated to some of the most scenic and fascinating landscapes of the world.
Our summer tour will take us to England, Ireland and Scotland. The lands with a very rich history, familiar to us through movies, books, magazines, press coverage of so many important events throughout the world history. Besides, you will be enjoying it in the company of your friends and families. This kind of camaraderie will be few and far in between as the years go by.
That brings up the fact that we are at the point where major changes are happening in our lives and our careers. Several of us either retired or have different obligations. The level of participation with the activities arranged by the TPAA has dramatically declined in the past several years. Our motherland had also been hit with several major natural disasters that required our help and support. It is one of the biggest expenditures of TPAA and TPAA Foundation. TPAA has always been operating on a year-to-year basis. The organization cannot survive without strong support from the members. That support comes in the form of donations, registration fees and participation in the various TPAA functions. The support is now more crucial than ever because transition from the older generation to younger generation is inevitable. We cannot just hand the reigns to them, not because they are incapable but because they really cannot afford to spend a lot of time with the organization work, while trying to build their career. We need to be realistic and plan to begin the process in the next two to three years. We do have several young members in the wings, ready to come in and assume the role of leadership. They, however, will still require our support and I hope that they continue to receive it from all of us.
I wish everyone a healthy, happy and prosperous 2012. I appreciate the outpours of support everyone is giving TPAA and our country in time of needs.
Respectfully submitted,
Apinan Thitipraserth MD
TPAA 2012 President