Asia Pacific Travel Health Conference in Shanghai

Karl Neumann, MD, Editor, NewsShare

The 4th Asia Pacific Travel Health Conference in Shanghai, China in late October attracted more than 500 delegates from about 40 countries. The focus of the conference: exchanges of opinions on some of the important health issues in travel medicine both regionally and globally, as well as the introduction of new technology and products that will help travelers stay healthy, safe and comfortable. For five days, from early morning until evening banquet time, the delegates immersed themselves in a smorgasbord of well over 100 pre-plenary and plenary sessions, symposia, workshops, country reports, oral presentations, lunch satellite programs, and free communication sessions. In addition, there were about two dozen pharmaceutical company exhibits, with displays from the large and well-known western pharmaceutical firms alongside booths featuring interesting traditional Chinese preventatives and cures for travel-related conditions. There well over three hundred posters vying for the attendee’s attention. The overwhelming consensus of those attending - mostly veteran conference goers and very well traveled - this conference was as professionally organized and managed as any they have ever attended. Outstanding was the way that the host committee attended to every need and request of the individual delegates.

Also outstanding – and memorable – was the conference center itself and the host city, Shanghai. The conference center is a massive, modern, all-glass building located on the banks of the Huangpu Jiang. This river flows through the center of the city and roughly divides Shanghai into two areas, Puxi, the old part of the city to the west, and Pudong the new part, to the east. The convention center, attached to a five-star hotel, is on the Pudong side. From the upper floors, through the glass walls you look across the narrow river to the historic Bund, symbolic in Chinese history and an area greatly influenced by Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At night, the buildings lining the river are very attractively lit, creating a memorable sight. On the Pudong side of the river, is the new Shanghai, arguably the most modern metropolises in the world. Many conference participants, especially the overseas ones, the well-traveled group, described the new city as “mind-boggling.” In what until 10 years ago was almost exclusively nondescript farmland, mostly rice paddies, there is now, as far as the eye can see, Paris-like boulevards lined by dozens, perhaps a hundred skyscrapers, many of them more than sixty stories high, with a few towers over eighty stories in height. Most are office buildings, but there area also hotels and residential buildings. Virtually every building is multi-colored and geometrically shaped. Says the local tourist office, “Like a pearl set in the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, Shanghai is the showcase of China’s fast growth and a bonanza of tourist attractions, business opportunities and cultural activities…” It is definitely a place to visit.