Annals of the MBC - vol. 5 - n' 4 - December 1992
EDITORIAL
A WORTHY ANNIVERSARY
Although this is
not Vol. X, No. 1, of the Annals, it does present a representative group of the
papers read on the Tenth Anniversary of the Mediterranean Burns Club. The complete
Proceedings of the celebratory conference will be found in the special volume entitled Burns
and Fire Disasters, Perspectives 2000, to be published in the course of J993 *.
Ten years ago when Giovanni Dogo, Michele Masellis, Gianfranco Girardi and William Gunn
initiated the idea of bringing together into a "Club" all like-minded
practitioners of the art of burn therapy from all the countries of the Mediterranean
basin, hopes were elated, but the expectations were never as high as to think that such a
club would one day become what it is today: a major international professional
institution, with representatives in each and every country of the Mediterranean region,
and acknowledged by the United Nations as the prime organization in the field of burns and
fire disasters. For, over the years, the MBC has had the vision and the wisdom to extend
the burns problem to its logical space, which naturally includes fires. Thus, the two
primary elements of the same emergency, burns as a surgical, clinical problem and fires as
a social, disaster management problem, can be approached in a more symbiotic manner, with
advantages to the individual and to society. An expression of this synthesis will be found
in the papers here reproduced.
The celebration of this tenth anniversary also coincides with the ten years of activity of
the G. Whitaker Foundation in the field of burns. The scientific secretariat of this
prestigious institution is entrusted to the Mediterranean Burns Club and the close
association of the two reflect international lustre and academic credibility on each
other. The G. Whitaker International Burns Prize, given for the tenth time now, has become
the most coveted recognition in that field.
With a confident perspective over the next ten years of the "Club", the papers
published in this and forthcoming issues of the Annals reflect the commitment of
the MBC and -if its collaborators to the reduction of fire hazards, tne improvement of
burn therapy and the betterment of the quality of life.
S.W.A. Gunn, M. Masellis
* Being a sequel to The Management qf Mass Burn Casualties and Fire
Disasters, edited by M. Masellis and S.W.A. Gunn. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston,
London and Dordrecht, 1992.
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