Both the education and the entertainment continued today. Takeda (Pharma) was kind enough to provide both wifi and an app for the program. As a result figuring out where to go and what to do has been extremely simple. It has also made the evaluation of each presentation and panel easy as the usual questions can all be answered on line.
The highlight of the day was a presentation by Jay Keystone (Canada) who has an extremely dry sense of humor as well as a breadth of knowledge in infectious disease. For this conference he was tagged to discuss STIs (sexually transmitted infections in CA/UK parlance often referred to as STD – diseases in American English) as they relate to the travel population. The issues of human trafficking, sex tourism (which includes both men and women on the travel side – men, women and children on the host country side) and disease spread aren’t particularly funny. But confirmation of sexual activity in the younger set (hey – alcohol, drugs, opportunity with fellow travelers and rarely planned) is not the same as the business traveler (older, money, often planned) still leads to consequences in both groups. As a side note – the CDC’s condom information includes the reminder to “open the package.” Most of us assume a slightly higher level of intelligence in our patients. Our issue is reminding them to take condoms along on the trip.
The business meeting at the end of the day was just about as boring as one would expect. The money is being handled responsibly, awards were given out, the outgoing and incoming executives shook hands and gave speeches (yada, yada, yada). I stayed through about 15 minutes of the reception then headed to the Tram. My flight is early in the morning (looking at an 0430 cab ride) and grabbing coffee at the airport. It is going to be a really, really long day…..
