London (VNA) - International airway experts from across the world,including the United Kingdom, United States of America, France, Italy, NewZealand, and experts from Vietnam will gather at the first South East AsianConference of the World Alliance of Airway Management (WAAM) in Hanoi on April 13-14.

The conference, expected to draw one thousand global delegates, has beenorganised and facilitated by the UK charity Facing The World (FTW) inconjunction with hospital anaesthetists from the 108 Central Hospital, Viet DucHospital and Hong Ngoc Hospital, and with support from Vietnam Airlines – the nationalflag carrier.

Bringing international airway experts together, the conference will facilitatelinks between airway societies, special interest groups, airway fellowshipproviders, training centres and airway related charities as well as arepository for local, national, and international airway societies, guidelines,statements, airway related education, research projects, research opportunitiesand grants.

The first day of the conference will be held at Hong Ngoc Hospital and thesecond, at Viet Duc Hospital, with presentations from international andVietnamese speakers, discussing airway management-related topics such as the preoperativeassessment of a difficult airway, multimodal approaches to manage the difficultairway, airway management of laryngeal tumours, paediatric difficult airways,advanced airway management in critical illness, and airway management inspecial situations.

FTW CEO Katrin Kandel said by facilitating the first WAAM conference inVietnam, FTW and its partners expect to create opportunities to share medicalknowledge and skills through professional exchange and training programmesaround the world.

Katrin Kandel, who is a board advisor to WAAM, said the organisation of theevent in Vietnam is the result of Vietnamese doctors visiting experts in the UKunder FTW- funded training programmes and seeing the benefits of guidelines fordifficult airway management. She added the Vietnamese doctors attended thefirst two conferences held by WAAM, and building on this, FTW has convinced theorganisation to hold the first ever conference outside of western world inconjunction with FTW’s Vietnamese partner hospitals, namely Hong Ngoc, Viet Ducand 108, as well as with the Vietnamese Anaesthetic Society.

Katrin Kandel along with WAAM believes this true collaboration will be thestart of many such annual conferences in different regions around the world.

WAAM is a not-for-profit grouping that aims to provide a link between AirwaySocieties and establish relationships with other organisations concerned withairway management. Previous world meetings of the Alliance have been attendedby thousands of healthcare professionals from over 70 countries.

FTW is a UK-registered medical charitable foundation set up in 2002 to treatchildren from developing countries with craniofacial defects. The foundationstarted operations in Vietnam in 2007. To date, it has helped provide surgeriesfor thousands children with craniofacial defects across Vietnam and sent over200 Vietnamese doctors to world class medical institutions in the UK, Canada,the US and Australia for training. The foundation has also donated 2.4 millionpounds (roughly 3 million USD) worth of telemedicine technology and surgicalequipment to its partner hospitals in Vietnam.

In the next five years, FTW plans to enable a further 40,000 operations to beperformed by its trained Vietnamese doctors. It expects to send at leastanother 200 Vietnamese doctors abroad for training and continue to donatemedical equipment./.