Can you assess the first results?
A total of 20 CME courses were organized during the first 18 months of this programme, reaching more than 2000 attendants, mostly young persons, in two third of the cases for short monothematic courses of intermediate or advanced levels, but also for introductory courses to include a full programme of continuous educational activity. After seeing the exceptional results, our Society is proud of the economical support given of about 300,000 Euros.

Can you already tell us the future developments of these initiatives?
The aim for the 2006 CME programme – which is going to be prepared including once again Clinical Epidemiology, Immunopathology and Transplantation – will be expanded to new areas for CME activities, such as Physiology, Peritoneal Dialysis and Haemodialysis. The ERA-EDTA highlights, which will be first of all presented at the ASN in Philadelphia on November 10, 2005, regarding a survey of the best reports at the Istanbul ERA-EDTA Meeting, will be repeated in two venues in Europe starting 2006, following a format which has proved to be useful for CME purposes in the United States.

Do you have anything special planned for young Nephrologists?
This is a point of particular interest: in several European Countries the money for scientific up-dating at residential courses is decreasing either from public sources and/or from industry sponsorship. The persons who mostly suffer this reduced availability of funds are the young persons, who rarely have the possibility to attend a high level scientific event. They are eager to get a deeper insight into new up-to-date fi elds as well as to seek out new developments for their professional activity. The ERA-EDTA is also going to offer special travel grants in 2006 for those who would not be able to sustain the travel costs to participate in the CME programme offered by ERA-EDTA.

You will find the complete programmes at www.era-edta.org . Section: CME Courses.