Welcome to the CISTM18

ISTM President Welcome Letter

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It is a great pleasure to invite you to the 18th Conference of the ISTM that will be held in Basel, Switzerland, from 21-25 May, 2023.

After several years of COVID-19 impacting on our ability to meet face-to-face, we are looking forward to meeting each other once again, while having some virtual options. After a long wait, what a wonderful place to meet again – Basel, Switzerland’s third largest City based on the beautiful Rhine River and located close to the French and German borders and the rest of fabulous Switzerland. Basel is the cultural and historic capital of Switzerland and home of the famous Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, which has recently expanded into an amazing sustainable four story headquarter building in Allschwil on the outskirts of Basel.

The Scientific Program Committee led by David Hamer has built a superb program that addresses many of the contemporary issues in travel medicine and migrant health. We hope we can share this wonderful event with you. We also look forward to your participation and discussions. There will be state-of-the art lectures, prominent speakers, workshops and debates, ample opportunities to discuss controversies in travel medicine, as well as free oral communications on latest research findings.

Peter Leggat,
ISTM President,
Australia

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CISTM18 Scientific Program Committee Chair Welcome Letter

It is my great pleasure to invite you to attend the 18th conference of the International Society of Travel Medicine! The last two years have been extremely challenging as the global COVID-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted international travel and has resulted in many of our travel medicine practices being substantially curtailed and even temporarily suspended. We are pleased therefore that the world is re-opening and that international travel volumes are steadily increasing.

We are planning an exciting in-person meeting in Basel, Switzerland with the theme “Dawn of a New Era in Travel Medicine”. Basel is a wonderful city on the banks of the river Rhine River with a well-equipped, modern conference center, excellent museums, great restaurants, and close proximity to France and Germany. Given the widespread disruptions in global travel secondary to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine with a resultant massive outflow of refugees to neighboring countries (many of which have active ISTM members), and the profound impact of climate change, the world is changing and we as travel medicine practitioners will need to be prepared to adapt to these changes. Our conference will address these and other topics of importance to the travel medicine community.

We have convened a highly experienced Scientific Program Committee, which has been hard at work developing a comprehensive and attractive program for you. Some of the program highlights include plenary and symposia on the impact of COVID-19 and climate change on travel, antimicrobial resistance, tick-borne diseases, migrant health, and the rising threat of artemisinin treatment failures for malaria-infected travelers. We will also have many excellent workshops including several introductory sessions for novel travel medicine providers as well as others on highly specialized topics such as migrant health, a focus on leishmaniasis, human trafficking, and dengue. 

We look forward to seeing you in Basel. Please mark your diaries for 21-25 May 2023!

David Hamer,
CISTM18 Scientific Program Committee Chair,
United States of America

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CISTM18 Local Organizing Committee Chair Welcome Letter

Dear Colleagues,

An early warm welcome in Basel, Switzerland from the Local Organizing Committee to the 18th Congress of the International Society of Travel Medicine from 21 to 25 May 2023. Although Switzerland's third-biggest city has just 200,000 inhabitants and a surface area of only 37 km2, it nonetheless boasts a vibrant social and an astounding cultural life. The appeal of this region lies both in its unique position at the point where three countries (Switzerland, France and Germany) meet – offering direct access to all the key transport routes and the world's oceans – and in its long tradition as a science and research location.

You can see that your physical presence makes a lot of sense, not only for enjoying a stunning cultural program with a taste of the famous ‘Laeggerli', but above all profiting from a sublime scientific program which will offer the long awaited exchange of ideas and lively discussions beyond avatars. So please make sure you start planning your trip to the very heart of Europe in the traditional area of Basel.

Obviously, we have also compiled a pre- and post-Congress program of various duration for you and your companions. Please see below some options, so you can already plan your leisure time in Switzerland, including the personal choices of the LOC. We will be happy to provide you with further advice on request. We acknowledge that travel to Basel may contribute to climate problems, but we are convinced that getting together after more than three years will be important for our constituency. The Congress aims to set landmarks in environment conscious behavior in dealing with water and other resources, in reducing material and food waste and – hopefully – in convincing those who come from Europe to use the train rather than airplanes.

We will provide you with more information as the meeting gets closer, and look forward to seeing you in Basel.

Christoph Hatz, Chair,
on behalf of the LOC/CISTM18