Dear Colleagues

I am delighted to have the privilege and honour of serving as the eighth President of EFAS.

Health services worldwide are in flux, as nations attempt to provide ever better quality healthcare with decreasing financial resources. The key to this dilemma lies, primarily, with the professions, who interact directly with patients and who can highlight the fundamental pressure points in the system, which block developments.

EFAS has considerable strength with expertise from differing healthcare systems across Europe, a range of professional skills and inter-related and cohesive aims of education, clinical service and research in a multinational and multicultural environment. Thus within EFAS we are able to cooperate and collaborate to distil the best elements of our various national systems, develop ethical and evidence based approaches to our patient population and spearhead developments in the field of hearing and, in many countries, balance disorders, across Europe.  

Technological and scientific developments have revolutionised, for example, the investigation and management of the hearing impaired infants, while improved pathophysiological understanding has led to new approaches in the management of the ever increasing elderly population with balance disorders. The literature suggests that somewhere in the order of 20% of the population have a hearing loss, 10% suffer tinnitus and at least 30% of adults will suffer a balance disorder at some point in their life. These figures will rise with the current demographic changes in the Developed World. We therefore have work to do!

Against this background, I welcome the opportunities that we have within EFAS and am grateful for the support of national societies and representatives across Europe. May I encourage you to bring our activities to the attention of colleagues in neighbouring countries that are not members of our Federation? I would welcome contact about any issues you wish EFAS to address and any innovations, which you feel would enhance our organisation.

I look forward to meeting old friends and colleagues and to forming new friendships in Cernobbio Italy at the next General Assembly in June 2010.

With my best personal regards

Linda Luxon
President EFAS