Day 9 – Sat 03 Oct: Dusseldorf

Another Mercure breakfast followed by a taxi ride to the CCD for early meetings.  Both Jane and I had meetings to attend starting at 8:30am, so it was another early start.  The MEPS Business meeting started at 10:15am, followed by lunch (same sandwiches, banana and water) then the session where I have my presentation.  The session was titled “Violence against pharmacies and my presentation was: “How far forward is too far forward?”  I used the military principles of health and logistics support as the basis of my presentation and then tried to apply them to every day pharmacy.  I’m not sure if people were just being nice, but by all accounts, the presentation was well received.  I was quite nervous as the room was huge; it could probably hold 200 people, but there were only about 50 present!!  There were two other presentations: 
-        Violence towards healthcare professionals is not acceptable – existing situations and campaigns within the International Red Cross of high value for community pharmacy by Bruce Eshaya-Chauvin 
-        Strategies to address the violence against pharmacies in peace-time by Anette Falk (Sweden).

There was one more session we had to attend as a MEPS member was presenting at.  The session was “Medicines for all – what is hindering the process?” and Trudi presented “The practical difficulties of delivering medicines during natural disasters”.  I left after Trudi’s presentation and stopped in the wifi area to catch up on emails and download presentations. 

Jane met up with me at the end of the session and after saying goodbye to people, we caught a taxi to the Hilton hotel to attend the Japanese reception.  This is always the last reception before the Closing Dinner so does not go on for too long.  The food and drink this year were good, and the company was excellent.  It was then back to the hotel, a change of clothes and down into the lobby to sit and chat before saying some final goodbye’s.  It was quite an early night compared to the rest of the week.

The last day of the congress is always an anti-climax and quite sad as we all have to say goodbye.  However, it is only until next year – in Buenos Aires this time

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