INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Churchill and our Arctic Medicine conference.

We hope that our attendees will be able to experience the wildlife and unique experiences of this area while attending our meeting.

Our sessions discuss Arctic and Sub Arctic concerns that may not be familiar. Our choice of topics only scratches the surface of relevant arctic medicine issues. We hope these forums will stimulate further discussions.

We are also pleased to announce a satellite session on “Review of Health Benefits of Multivitamins- an evidence based approach” which will take place outside of our regular meeting.

Our Speakers

Dr Jim Wilkerson is well known as a lecturer and author of several publications. His “Medicine for Mountaineers” has been a well-known landmark book in Wilderness Medicine. As a member of the Wilderness Medical Society he frequently travels and speaks on a variety of topics. He has retired from his pathology practice and now resides with his wife in Utah

Dr Gary Podolsky is a Manitoba graduate and now works in Winnipeg in both Sports Medicine and Travel Medicine. He has worked in Churchill and the North West Territories as well as other jobs outside Canada. His interest in Travel led him to start lecturing about ideas he had learned from other physicians abroad.

This conference is collaboration between both lecturers and is also supplemented by our Winnipeg Winter Medicine Meeting held Oct 5 th in Winnipeg.

We also thank Merck and Wyeth for their sponsorship and Mr Ash Mustapha and Mr Shawn Yaffe for their kind support.

Special thanks to our support staff- Candace Corroll, Stella Lee, Gail Oborne, and Marita Vongrathsavay.

This conference would not be possible without them.

We welcome your feedback.

We welcome suggestions for future speakers and topics.

Our next proposed talk April 2006 is tentatively on Diseases Transmitted by Food.