EAMSC, East Asian Medical Students’ Conference

Brief:

EAMSC, the East Asian Medical Students’ Conference, is an annual conference with delegates from AMSAKorea, AMSA Hong-Kong, AMSA- Japan and MSA-ROC, Taiwan. It is more like a seminar than a general assembly and there’s always a different topic for each conference. The aim of the conference is to establish a more close contact among the medical students from the four areas.

History:

1987, During the time of the 8th Asian Medical Students’ Conference in Malaysia, delegates from Taiwan and Korea agreed about the need for more specialized conference between the two countries. The former name for EAMSC as ”Korea-China medical students’ conference” (also known as the ”Sino-Korea Medical Students’ Conference”). Japan and Hongkong had not joined this conference yet. The conference is always held in late January or early February.

In 1988, the 1st conference was held in Korea under the theme of ”The Present Status and Future of Medical Service in Asia”. The topics for the following conferences have been ”Hepatitis B - An Epidemic in Korea and Taiwan”, ”The New Hope for Life - Organ Transplanta­tion”, ”Prevention of Tuberculosis” , ”Prevention of Occupational Disease - On its Review of Present Status and Prospective”, ”Geriatric Disorders - The Medicine of the 21st Century” and ”The Liver Disease”. In 1994, medi­cal students from Hong Kong and Japan also took great interests in joining this conference and in 1995, the 8th conference derived its current name of East Asian Medi­cal Students’ Conference. ”Alcohol and Drug Abuse” and ”Rehabilitation” were the themes for the 8th and 9th conference. This year, 1997, the EAMSC has just celebrated its 10 years’ anniversary with the theme of ”The Evolution of Modern Medicine”.

Feature:

Most of the articles in the symposium are related to East Asian Regions. For example, in this year’sconference there were papers discussing about the current mortality pattern in Hongkong and Korea, the Anti tumor effect of Gin­seng, Current Health Seeking Behavior in Korea, The Evolution of the Social Status of Physicians in Taiwan, and so on.

The EAMSC is composed of member states of the AMSA (Asian Medical Students’ Association) and for this cause, it also has a conference anthem, ”See The World in Perfect Harmony”, same as the AMSA song. There is neither a permanent President nor a Secretary General, only a chairman for the conference and a chairman for the working committee. The contact work is done by four RCs (Regional Coordinators) from dif­ferent countries. During each conference delegates are divided into different groups and there are guides from the working committee to get everybody to know each other well and to become their tour guide in the city.

Prospect:

The EAMSC is a conference limited to the region of Eastern Asia. We hope that the seminar will be open to medical students from all over world with interests in Eastern Asia Medicine Development or in making friends.