Editorial Jean-Christophe Mercier - Past-President of the GFRUP - 18 janvier 2002

The 'Groupe Francophone de Réanimation et d'Urgences Pédiatriques' (GFRUP) gathers many French speaking pediatric intensivists and emergency physicians in order to promote the exchange of ideas, protocols, teaching and clinical research.

Last year, the GFRUP organized the first French-speaking meeting of Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care during the 3rd World Congress of Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care, in Montréal. We succeeded to support the trip and stay of one representative of almost every unit of France, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Vietnam, provided they sent at least one abstract to the World Congress. A significant step was thus made to better open the French to the international world.

Now, we have decided to translate our web site (www.gfrup.com) into a few foreign languages, i.e., English, Spanish, Portuguese, and maybe German so that we can better communicate with our non-French-speaking colleagues.

In France including overseas territories (~60 millions inhabitants), we have identified 91 pediatric and neonatal ICUs with roughly 900 beds. See our updated database that lists address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mails of the full-time doctors.

Each year, the GFRUP will organize:
1.    The pediatric session of the Société de Réanimation de Langue Française (SRLF) meeting. This year, it will be on January 18, 2002 in Paris with the following program: a) Ethics; b) The immunocompromised child in the PICU; c) Vascular access in pediatric patients; d) Poisoning in children.
2.    The emergency or intensive care session of the Société Française de Pédiatrie (SFP) meeting. This year, it will take place next May 2002 in Montpellier.
3.    Furthermore, we will favor the participation of the French pediatric intensivists to the annual meeting of the European Society of Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC), and every third year to the congress of the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive Care Societies (WFPICS).

In fact, there are too many meetings either worldwide or in Europe. As the money available would inevitably shrink given the merging tendency of the pharmaceutical industry, traditional financial support of the scientific meetings, we should be wise to re-organize the system and focus only on large-scale national or European meetings. We may dream to gather in the future the vast majority of the various sub-specialities of Pediatrics into a Federation of the European Pediatric Societies / European Society of Pediatric Research (EPS/ESPR) that would match the American Pediatric Societies/Society for Pediatric Research (APS/SPR). We may even envision to alternate every even and odd years a large-scale meeting in the US and Europe.
Another very important aspect of the GFRUP is to provide the opportunity for the young colleagues to exchange ideas with the senior pediatric intensivists, to present their research work, to promote large-scale either epidemiological or randomized clinical trials. Last but not the least, the GFRUP should entertain a very good spirit between the neonatal and pediatric intensivists, and pediatric emergency physicians.

Hoping that this website would receive a large-scale approval, I would like to thank all the individuals who contributed to the success of this group.

Jean-Christophe Mercier - Past-President of the GFRUP - December 28, 2001