Dear Prof Murat Yurdakok, President of the 2nd UENPS congress, Dear Dr
Mathias Keller, President of EFCNI, Dear Prof George Simbruner, mentor of
UENPS, Dear Prof Giuseppe Buonocore, next President of UENPS, Dear
members of the Executive and Supervisory Committees, Dear presidents and
delegates of Member and Partner Societies of UENPS, dear invited speakers,
dear colleagues, authorities, ladies and gentlemen.
Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting.

First of all, I would like to justify, all of you, my impossibility to participate in
the congress, fact that I greatly regret. The reason is that the birth of my first
granddaughter probably will occur during the week of the congress. I hope you understand my decision that was very difficult to take.

However, it is my great pleasure to be with you some minutes, at least in the
opening ceremony of this Congress.

Following the 1st UENPS Congress, in Roma, in November 2008, and according
our decision, 2 years later, here we are, in this ancient, historic and beautiful city
of Istanbul to participate during these next 3 days on the 2nd Congress of UENPS
- Global Neonatology and Perinatology.

This is the official scientific congress of the Union of European Neonatal &
Perinatal Societies founded on the 1st July 2006, in Vienna and registered in
Roma in April 17, in 2008. It is an organisation integrating the national
European societies of neonatal and perinatal medicine and represents countries
and governing bodies of each national society.
Actually 24 national societies are members of UENPS, and many efforts have
been done to integrate more societies, namely from Germany, Belgium, UK…)

Our main goals are to improve healthcare quality in perinatal and neonatal
medicine in the European countries by integrating, coordinating and adding
efforts of national and scientific societies.

UENPS wants to promote the knowledge of the perinatal indicators and develop recommendations, guidelines, training of the healthcare givers, research and any other tools to achieve our dream, a common management of the mother and the newborn to accomplish their rights and to provide them the best care independently where they live, as it is mentioned in the Declaration of newborn’s rights: All human beings are born free and with the same dignity and rights.
We support, we advise and work together with the local and European Health
Authorities, collaborating with the European Community about standards in
Neonatal and Perinatal Care and rights of the newborns in each country.

According these aims, during these 2 years, we concretize the following
activities:

• The Creation and development of the UENPS website www.uenps.com I invite all of you to visit it and to give us your contribution to its improvement.
• The Support and collaboration with the European Foundation for Care of Newborn Infant, EFCNI, a partner society of UENPS (a Memorandum of understanding between both societies was written, last month). Since the 1st International UENPS Congress in Roma, we also support with EFCNI the Prematurity Awareness Day, every year, on November 17, or in any other day, during the month of November, being the date chosen by each NICU. The UENPS collaborated with EFCNI also on “EFCNI Benchmarking report on neonatal health – Too Little, Too Late? “Published this year
• We supported and collaborated with European networks, namely EuroNeoNet, favouring societies to collect and share data on neonatal and perinatal Demography and Epidemiology in Europe.
• We promoted multinational trials in collaboration with national and scientific societies:
  One in 2009- Non Steroids Anti Inflammatory Drugs in the treatment of PDA in
  European Newborns. Another one, “Ethics in Neonatology: a look over Europe” concluded this year, which results will be presented during this meeting
• We worked with European Health Authorities, with meetings and presentations to the European Parliament, in Brussels: In the first meeting, on December 2009 we presented: The Past, Present and Future of UENPS, showing our aims to be recognized by the European Health Authorities. Other 2 talks, The Premature infants: a challenge for Europe and the Portuguese Experience on Neonatal mortality of VLBW infants, were also presented in this very important meeting. On 2nd meeting in European Parliament last May, we presented: The Portuguese experience on the Regionalization in Perinatal Care and The UENPS Proposal to European Regionalization in Perinatal Care
• We elaborated the Declaration of the Rights of the Newborn, included in our
• The 1st Meeting between UENPS and ESPR/ESN occurred in Geneva, May 2009 with the aim to find the better collaboration between both societies, which agree to be partner societies last October.
• We collaborated with European Society on Neonatology helping to improve the knowledge in Europe about Education on Neonatology.
We hope that other European societies of Neonatology and Perinatology joint UENPS as members and other societies or associations joint UENPS as partner societies. We believe that Scientific Societies, Parents Associations, European and Local Health Authorities working together will achieve their goals that could be to act in harmonizing these following 3 key points:
• The first is Organization of Healthcare in Perinatal Medicine in each
  European country.
• The second is the development and improvement of Neonatal/Perinatal National Networks. Knowing that it is necessary to collect and share data on Neonatal and Perinatal Epidemiology in Europe, it will be necessary that each country and each national neonatal society collect perinatal data in a network. UENPS will try to help societies and add efforts to have a European Network
• The last aspect is the Post graduation of Paediatricians in Neonatology that varies widely in Europe. It will be necessary to make uniform in all European countries the Curricula for Specialists in Neonatal Medicine working in collaboration with the European Society of Neonatology
• During these 2 years we also support the organization of National
  Congresses of Member Societies
• And finally the Organization of the 2nd International Congress of UENPS,
  here in Istanbul.
Meetings like this are of crucial importance. We are in a global world of easy access to vast amounts of information. But information does not mean
knowledge. Knowledge comes with the incorporation of information with experience, our experience, the experience we gather and exchange in scientific forums such as this one, the experience we live and learn with our older and younger peers. Knowledge comes with the generous contributions of researchers and scientists, also part of this meeting.
In this very important moment, I would like to thank publically:

1- The Members of Executive Committee (Italian, Spanish, Hellenic, Slovakian and Turkish Neonatal Societies, Lithuanian and Bulgarian Neonatal Associations, and Serbian Perinatal Association) and Supervisory Committee (Neonatal Society for Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Estonian Perinatal Society and Polish neonatal Society); thank you for your collaboration and for thrusting me during these 2 years of my presidency. 2 – We thanks the Presidents of member societies of UENPS for all collaboration and participation, namely for
• Sending all the information about the national society to UENPS website
• For the Collaboration in developing standards of better practices on perinatal healthcare.
• For the Contribution to improve the scientific level of the UENPS Congresses, facilitating the active participation of national society members in the UENPS congresses that has been considered part of national society activities.
• For asking UENPS the scientific patronage to the national society meetings and include UENPS logo in the program.
• For the Collaboration in the multicenter studies
3 – We thank also, the Presidents of the Partner Societies, namely EFCNI, forthe collaboration in the fields of education, research, and guidelines to improve quality in perinatal assistance, the well known better practices

4. We thank Prof Murat Yurdakok, President of the Congress and to both Organizing and Scientific Committees who put a significant effort to concretize this scientific and social attractive event.
5 – We thank the invited speakers that accept to participate in this congress increasing the scientific level of the meeting
6 – Our thanks to the UENPS Secretariat – emeeting, namely Roberta and Elena, for their professionalism and
7 - The Congress Secretariat - Flaptour, for their important contribution to this congress.
8 – Nowadays with all economical difficulties, the sponsors are more and more important to organize these scientific congresses. Also in this meeting the sponsors gave UENPS the economical possibility to concretize this Congress. Thank you very much.
I hope that all participants in this congress could find the opportunities to improve the clinical practices, to promote knowledge exchange in healthcare, to improve their research projects and start other ones, all this, in an ambience of friendship.
I wish you all, a pleasant and successful meeting, up to your expectations, and hope you also take this opportunity to make new, and review old friends.
I will be with you, in mind and heart, during all the time of the Congress.
Have an excellent meeting and enjoy the beautiful city of Istanbul
Thank you very much for your attention and
See you in Porto, November 2012, on the occasion of the 3rd UENPS Congress.
Hercília Guimarães
President of UENPS