Dear friends and colleagues,
On behalf of the governing council of the PanAfrican Society of Cardiology it gives me great pleasure to invite you to attend the PASCAR Congress which will be held in partnership with the South African Heart Association.
Building on successful previous partnerships, we are delighted to welcome you to the beautiful city of Sandton in South Africa.
The four-day programme will be designed to bring together distinguished international and regional faculty to deliver high calibre scientific content, covering almost all aspects of clinical cardiology and dealing in particular with specific endemic cardiac problems in Africa.
The remarkable gathering will be a good opportunity for interactive education, innovative discussions and a great chance to exchange ideas with colleagues coming from all over the world .
The joint meeting will be held in association with Africa PCR, Cardiac Imaging and African Heart Network as the 2019 partners is expected to be one of the largest conferences in the region with your support.
We look forward to welcoming you all to this Cardiology premier event. .
Best wishes
Saad Subahi FRCP FESC
PASCAR President
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Dear Colleagues,
We are extremely proud to announce the 20th Annual Congress of the South African Heart Association (SA Heart 2019), in conjunction with the Pan African Society of Cardiology (PASCAR), AfricaPCR, the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Congress of South Africa (SA-CMR) and the African Heart Network (AHN). The coming together of five major groups will be an important milestone for cardiology in Africa. Our theme ‘Meeting the Needs for Africa’ is highly relevant in an ever changing landscape and epidemic of cardiovascular disease (CVD) on this continent.
It is now timeous and most appropriate to hold SA Heart 2019 in association with AfricaPCR, a practical case-based interventional cardiology programme. PCR encompasses interventional cardiology in Africa and blends extremely well with the overall theme. SA-CMR will bring a unique imaging dimension to the meeting. Advocacy and policy will be the focus of AHN to identify and address our unmet needs if we are reduce the burden of CVD in Africa, a stated aim of the WHO.
SA Heart 2019, PASCAR, AfricaPCR, SA-CMR and AHN will stimulate a creative exchange of ideas and will offer many opportunities to network with both local and international colleagues. An outstanding platform of leaders and teachers will provide four days of scintillating cardiovascular science and medicine.
We both look forward to welcoming you all to Sandton, Johannesburg on the 31st October 2019.
David Jankelow
President, SA Heart®
Rob Dyer
Chairman, Scientific Programme Committee, SA Heart® 2019
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Message from the course directors: Farrel Hellig, Mpiko Ntsekhe and William Wijns
It is with excitement and anticipation the we announce plans to take Africa PCR 2019 to new heights, where more delegates from across the continent will be able to meet and share experiences and collectively enhance the delivery of interventional cardiovascular care to our precious patients.
Africa PCR 2018, held in Cape Town, once again kept faith with the “by and for” principle, and successfully met most of your clearly expressed needs. However, 2019 provides us with a special opportunity for us to fulfil a goal which all of you in the AfricaPCR family have asked us pursue; to make the course accessible and available to the wider community of Pan African Interventionalists. In 2019 AfricaPCR will join PASCAR’s bi-annual congress and the annual SA Heart congress, including the African Heart Network and the Cardiac Imaging Society of Africa, to create an African celebration of Cardiology. Recognising that the African Interventionalist has also to be proficient in most aspects of other cardiological roles for comprehensive treatment of their patients, a one stop shop where each independent meeting will be able to showcase the best of what the continent has to offer, is the perfect solution.
In 2019, our 2-track formula, so successful over the past 2 editions, will continue. Learning and Applied sessions will run in a staggered parallel manner allowing attendees to learn and understand their choice of procedures from first principles in the learning session, followed by advanced application in the applied track, which will incorporate live transmissions comprising a mix of structural and coronary cases.
The learning track is designed for delegates who want to develop the skills needed to initiate a new interventional programme or a new procedure. Live-in-a-box cases are used to create a scenario for interactive learning and discussion and material is carefully chosen based on your feedback from prior editions. The applied track is designed for attendees who are already performing procedures but wish to achieve a higher level of proficiency and knowledge. The applied track is based on live cases which are carefully chosen to meet the needs of a broad range of African interventionalists.
The programme structure will continue to allow you the opportunity to present your own work in the interactive 'Case Corner Sessions', in an environment where it will be quiet and intimate to facilitate discussion amongst the attendees. So please start thinking about cases you may wish to discuss with your colleagues and watch out for the “call for cases”. The important ”Stent Save a Life” programme will be back with a dedicated session.
Critical to the success of the past two editions was the active involvement of our Allied professional colleagues, so it is a great pleasure to announce that they will be closely involved again in both the learning and applied tracks, in accordance with our vision of the Cath Lab Team working together in a joint educational initiative.
The Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg is a world-class facility with considerable infrastructure on its doorstep. We believe that it will be the ideal setting to allow you to get your fill of practical tools and tips to take back to your Cath Lab from AfricaPCR, share space and ideas with colleagues and friends from throughout our continent and imbibe the wonderful content to be provided by the faculty and programmes on offer from PASCAR and SA Heart.
Dear Delegates,
It is with great excitement that I announce the 2019 African Heart Network Conference to be held in association with the South African Heart Association and PASCAR, in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa.
The up-coming conference provides a platform for scientists, practitioners, advocates and policy-makers to come together to mobilise the cardio-vascular community to reduce the burden of CVD. The African Heart Network (AHN) looks forward to creating the momentum in Africa towards meeting the WHO 25X25 target of reducing cardiovascular disease (CVD). While 2025 is not far off, there is still adequate time for foundations, societies and related organsations, to work with the AHN to not only improve the cardio-vascular health of fellow Africans but to also keep pace with other WHO regions. AHN also works with the World Heart Federation to help realise these continental and global targets.
The AHN is a registered non-profit with a clear mission to reduce CVD burden through evidence-based interventions and programmes which is the reason we are looking forward to the association with SAHA and PASCAR as this will provide an excellent platform for inter-stakeholder engagement to drive advocacy and policy.
I was elected president in March 2018 and have a dedicated council namely, Professor Habib Gamra (Immediate Past President), Professor Hassen Ghannem (Vice-President), Professor Fastone Goma (Treasurer), and Professor Daniel Lemogoum. Together with my council members I look forward to sharing the 2019 conference platform with existing AHN members, potential AHN members and fellow colleagues.
I would love to welcome you all in person to South Africa for the 2019 AHN combined conference.
Sincerely
Professor Pamela Naidoo (MA, MPH, DPhil)
President: African Heart Network
Dear Friends,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 2019 Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Congress of South Africa (SA-CMR), taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre from 31 October to 3 November 2019. In this historic meeting, the SA-CMR scientific sessions will run in parallel with those of SA Heart, the Pan African Society of Cardiology, Africa PCR and the African Heart Network, in what promises to be an exciting festival of science and networking.
The meeting, which is now an important feature in the calendars of many with an interest in advanced cardiovascular imaging, is the only one of its kind on the African continent and brings together cardiologists, radiologists, radiographers, physicists, biomedical engineers and both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees. The SA-CMR is endorsed by the South African Heart Association and the Radiological Society of South Africa (RSSA) and is held jointly under the auspices of the Cardiovascular Imaging Society of South Africa, a special interest group of the SA Heart, and the South African Society for Cardiovascular Imaging, a special interest group of the RSSA. Further, the meeting also receives endorsement from the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, the European Association for Cardiovascular Imaging, the Pan African Society for Cardiology and the African Society of Radiology. Local faculty will be supported by an international faculty, through the SCMR, ISMRM and EACVI.
The theme for the next meeting will be ‘Imaging cardiovascular disease in pregnancy’. Talks related to these theme will be presented by experts throughout the meeting. As always, the SA-CMR will have a strong focus on conditions occurring commonly in the African context. There will be a single parallel track every day, together with the opportunity to attend plenary sessions of the SA Heart congress and other scientific sessions from the other concurrent meetings.
The congress will be supported by industry partners and I encourage you to visit the exhibition stands, which will highlight the latest developments in cardiology and cardiovascular imaging.
I very much look forward to welcoming you to this meeting where you will engage with the science and other delegates from South Africa and beyond.
Professor Ntobeko Ntusi
Director, Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Congress of South Africa