Welcome letter for the UCT and SU Departments of Medicine Physicians’ Conference 2024

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is a tremendous pleasure to welcome you to the 2024 Physicians’ Conference taking place at the Graduate School of Business in Cape Town, from Thursday the 1st of February to Sunday 4th of February 2024. This meeting has become the premier educational event not only for South African specialist physicians, family physicians, and medical registrars but for physicians and specialist trainees from the rest of the African continent and beyond. This unique and popular conference, which addresses ways of optimising conventional care for patients with common medical conditions, is attracting a growing audience of attendees from the private and public sectors.

For the second time, the organisation of this meeting will be a collaborative effort between the Departments of Medicine at the Universities of Cape Town (UCT) and Stellenbosch (US). It is my hope that this and several other efforts will bring the two institutions closer in partnering to overcome many common challenges and to achieve our common goals. The theme for this year’s conference is ‘providing quality care in resource limited settings and times of austerity’.

As always, besides the three-day proceedings, the conference will include various interactive workshops where experts will focus on pragmatic approaches and updates on patient management. The workshops planned include renal medicine, rheumatology, pulmonology, gastroenterology, and immunology. It is the combination of enthusiastic faculty, the practical, interactive workshops and the theory updates that have made this conference the great success it has been over the years.

The conference will be supported by industry partners, and I encourage you to visit the exhibition stands, which will highlight the latest developments in medicine.

I very much look forward to engaging with you during this meeting where, as well as enjoying the science and education and connecting with delegates from South Africa and beyond.

Sincerely yours,