Message from the President (2006 - 2008)

Dear Colleagues,

Once again SEAADE is proud to have successfully conducted its 17th Annual Scientific Meeting on the 13-16th September 2006, this time round held at the Jakarta Convention Centre, Indonesia, back to back with University Indonesia’s 14th Scientific Meeting and Refresher Course. More than 1000 participants registered for the joint meeting. On behalf of SEAADE Exco, we would like to congratulate the LOC under the able leadership of Dr Afi Sarsito and her team for their hardwork, commitment and a memorable meeting. Much has been shared and discussed as to the move and future direction of dental education. The SEAADE Peer Review Program launched two years ago saw three dental schools, University of Escolar, Phillipines, Universiti Sains Malaysia and University of Indonesia; voluntarily undertake to be reviewed by the SEAADE Reviewers. It is exciting to note that with its tremendous diversity, Dental Education in the South East Asia and East Asian Region have at least agreed on one common platform, moving towards quality assurance in education in the near future.

This year’s meeting in Jakarta (also saw to the launching of the new SEAADE-GC Dental Asia Student Table Prevention Competition other than the Dentsply Student Table Clinician Programme. The former sponsored by GC Dental Asia for five years saw ten dental schools (out of 15 submissions) being represented in this inaugural competition. The Gold Medal was won by S.D.M College of Dental Sciences and Hospital Dhavalanagar Dharwad of India while the Faculty of Dentistry University of Malaya, Malaysia and University of Indonesia won the Silver and Bronze Medal, respectively. The independent Panel of Judges also agreed to extend two consolation prizes to University of Singapore and University of Hong Kong. The projects were judged based on suitability and appropriateness of the project to the target group needs, creativity and innovation as well as team effort and oral presentation. For the Dentsply Competition, first prize was won by Ms Prema of University of Malaya who won the trip to represent SEA to the IADR,AADR 2006 Meeting in Las Vegas, USA, .

The meeting ended with a bang with an addition of 15 new institutional members, making it a total of 32 schools. In addition, a new Council was also elected to spearhead SEAADE activities in the next two years (2006-2008). Given the encouraging progress made in all its activities and to ensure successful continuity the meeting also agreed to appoint three ex-officio, Prof Toh Chooi Gait (Peer Review Committee), Prof Krassanai Wangrangsimakul (Past Presidents’ Project) and, Assoc Prof Keng Siong Beng (Editorial and Publishing).

At this point in time I would like to congratulate the new SEAADE Council members for their appointment. A note of special thanks to one and all of the past SEAADE Council members under the leadership of our Immediate Past President, Assoc Prof Dr Keng Siong Beng for their commitment and dedication.

We hope to bring in more exciting reports when we meet again in Bali, Indonesia on 6-8th September 2007 for the forthcoming 18th SEAADE and 21st SEA IADR Scientific Meeting.

Until then, best wishes and kind regards to all.

See you in Bali, Sept 2007!

Prof Rahimah Abdul Kadir
President
SEAADE 2006-2008