Message from the Executive Director of ISTH

Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Geneva – one of the great European cities and certainly one of the most beautiful – located on Lake Geneva and surrounded by Mont-Blanc and the majestic Alps, combines old world charm with the bustle of a modern city. It is my pleasure to invite you to the XXIst Congress of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis to be held on July 6-12, 2007 in this wonderful old city and its magnificent setting.
We return to the country of our first SSC meeting, in Basel in 1954, where the International Committee for the Standardisation of the Nomenclature of the Blood Clotting Factors (ICSNBCF) was organised, later to become the International Committee on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ICTH), later to become the ISTH, and the country of our first Congress, in Montreux in 1970 with Dr. Fritz Koller as President. Overall, this will be our sixth meeting in Switzerland and the first since 1974.
Dr. Bounameaux and his Organising Committee are putting together a great scientific program that will highlight the latest scientific advances in our field along with high quality state-of-the-art and symposium lectures. Our science gets stronger and stronger every meeting and Geneva promises to be a very
exciting meeting. I hope you will join the organisers in Geneva.
Enjoy the meeting, your friends and colleagues, and the city, the home for the World Health Organisation, the International Red Cross, and the United Nations European Office. Walk the cobbled streets of the old town high on a central hill, down to the waterfront to some of the cafes and restaurants. If you have time after the meeting, see the port of Nyon, La Gruyère (where I hear they have cheese), the mountains, Chamonix, the Hotel des Trois Couronnes in Vevey, and the other wonderful and historic places in the vicinity of Geneva.

GILBERT C. WHITE II
Executive Director ISTH