Invitation to Attend

On behalf of the Australian Society for Antimicrobials I would like to invite you to the Society's 7^th Annual Scientific Meeting "Antimicrobials 2006" to be held at the Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach, Sydney on Thursday 23 - Saturday 25 February 2006.

I am please to announce Fred Tenover from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta USA, and Werner Zimmerli from the Basel University Medical Clinic, Liestal Switzerland will be participating at the meeting. Fred will be presenting the plenary "Laboratory Response to Emerging Antimicrobial Resistance. How are we Doing?" while Werner will be presenting the plenary "Treatment of Prosthetic Infections". Both speakers will also be participating in symposia sessions. In addition Fred will be involved in the antimicrobial susceptibility workshop.

The Australian plenary speaker for Antimicrobials 2006 is Paul Johnson from Austin Health. Paul will be presenting the plenary "Mycobacterium ulcerans: Out of Africa"

The programme's symposia will cover many different aspects on antimicrobials including "All Things Antifungal", Preserving Antimicrobials", "Community MRSA", "Severe Sepsis" and Multidrug Resistant Gram Negative Bacteria. In addition we have planned a workshop on Saturday afternoon titled "How Good is your Laboratory's Antimicrobial Susceptibility Method? This workshop will include discussion on the Vitek2, CLSI Disc Diffusion, CDS Disc Diffusion, and the BSAC Disc Diffusion susceptibility methods.

Once again ASA is offering travel awards to financial members of the Society who are submitting abstracts for the meeting. These awards include return economy airfare, registration and accommodation. In addition the ASA/bioMérieux travel award will be awarded to an abstract dealing with the identification of bacterial resistance to antimicrobials in a routine clinical setting.

To promote discussion and interaction between delegates and the invited speakers the meeting's registration includes lunches, morning and afternoon teas and admission to the Welcome Reception. In addition a conference dinner is planned on the Friday evening.

I am confident that you will find the meeting's programme both scientifically stimulating and informative and we look forward to meeting you in Sydney.

Keryn Christiansen
President ASA