The International Federation of Emergency Medicine has held it’s annual conference, ICEM, in Amsterdam this year and what a conference it has been for GECCo-spotting. Not one but two of our upcoming Edinburgh event workshop leads, Taj Hassan and Colin Macalindin were to be found  – Colin presenting his work evaluating the Bristol-Nanyuki global health fellowship. 

Leeds-based Taj of course has been supporting GECCo for some time, and was a key-note speaker at our “Global health back home: obligation or opportunity” online event in October 2021. 

Also amongst the Bristol crew (and indeed, two of last year’s presenters for our Manchester event “Weaving global health into the ED: partners, mentors and fellowships”), Imara Gluning and Andy Lockyer were among the delegates.

Andy’s presentation added to the global health foray, alongside that of a long-time Twitter champion of the GECCo journey, Rob Mitchell from Melbourne as he presented some work he has done with colleagues in Papua New Guinea on the Interagency Integrated Triage Tool. 

Turns out the Australian College of Emergency Medicine actually have their own “GECCo” (albeit with less of our reptilian-imagery) – and whilst he and colleagues graciously moved past our inadvertent infringement – it created a good opportunity for some cross-continental learning as to how two higher income countries engage their emergency care community in global health. Fun fact: what does the internet call a group of GECCo’s [sic]? A HYPE. Was there ever a better collective noun?! That this is unverified information feels unimportant given how great it sounds.

Some great conversations were had with our Aussie counterparts – if we’re lucky we may get to hear more on that front in the global health section of the RCEM Annual Scientific Conference in Glasgow (September 2023) – watch this space.  On the topic of great conversations,  Amsterdam provided an opportunity to rekindle some discussions with colleagues within the African Federation of Emergency Medicine as to how GECCo might be placed to support over the coming months and years.

 One of GECCo’s founders, Anisa Jafar delivered a presentation advocating the Access-, Resource-, Context-limited Healthcare (ARC-H) principle of defining global health.

A further presentation was on behalf of an ongoing collaborative piece of work with Silas Webb, Charlotte Ward alongside Claire Crichton-Iannone stemming from some initial introductions via GECCo and its close working relationship with the RCEM Global Emergency Medicine committee.

Whilst there is absolutely an argument for more and more online engagement, for all of the extra access this can create, there very much remains a place for in-person events such as this to foster closer working. The key of course is making such events geographically and financially accessible – having them take place in a variety of places where regional colleagues can more easily attend, and, when they happen to be more out of reach, adopting methods of delegate support such as the AfCEM’s Supadel model. Where there is a will, there is always a way