From Regional Patient Advocate Michal Rutkowski
The September-October period was intense in terms of my involvement in various activities in the regions. First of all, the main activity was the preparation of the 2020 HAEi Virtual Regional Workshop Central Eastern Europe & Benelux, which is extremely time-consuming. With the global pandemic limitations, the HAEi Regional Workshops will go virtual, and this form of the event is way more challenging to prepare than face to face meetings. Preparing scripts, coordinating HAE International member organizations, recording interviews, translating and creating transcripts, video production and finally watching each recording dozen times can be exhausting. But I am happy to announce that we are aligned with the production plan and will be ready to deliver high-quality HAE sessions for our regional community on time. Having this opportunity, I would like to thank the entire HAE International team, member organizations from Central Eastern Europe and Benelux, as well as HAE experts for their support and brilliant cooperation in organizing this event.
Naturally, in addition to the workshop preparations, I spent a lot of time in contact with member organizations and health care professionals from Benelux, Central Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The main subject of these contacts was the provision of information about the new ACARE global network, as well as the search for potential new patient leaders.
It is with great pleasure that I can inform you that we continue to increase commitment to patient advocacy among our Middle East member organizations. As a result of our activities, the HAE UAE now has a new patient lead, Mrs. Shradha Singhania, and we are about to introduce a new patient lead in Kuwait. Also, more and more physicians/clinics/hospitals are interested in joining the ACARE global network, and currently, I work with Estonia, Jordan and Kuwait on implementation of this specific project there.
