Report of the Honorary Secretary to the 79th annual meeting of MSSVD held at the Royal Society of Medicine, Friday 27 October 2000

My final year as Honorary Secretary to MSSVD is now drawing to a close. The final challenge I set myself is to have circulated a summary of the main activities of the society including accounts and financial report in advance of the annual general meeting. It has required the hard work of the officers of the society, the secretariat and finance department at the RSM, and Graham Tomlinson, charitable governance adviser. The annual report was printed in November and circulated to members.

There are now 657 UK members of the society, with 101 overseas members and 31 honorary life members, 21 of whom are resident in the United Kingdom. There were 62 new members last year, of which 34 were nurses and health advisers. There are a number of MSSVD members to whom we paid tribute. These included Dr Ratnatunga; Dr Seaman; Dr George Csonka; Dr Christine Bakshi; Dr T Reed; Dr Andrew Crooks.

January 21 was a particularly sad occasion for the society when Maggie Godley sadly died following her two year illness. She will be remembered for all the work she put into running both MSSVD and AGUM and for her care and support as a fellow human being. Her husband has agreed to a memorial, which will be in the form of a prize given to the best presentation from a district general hospital consultant at MSSVD Spring meetings.

The past year has seen an even more rapid pace of change resulting in the Honorary Secretary having difficulty keeping her head above water. Some major issues for the society have been identified.

The first of these is a review and implementation of the changes to the charitable governance of MSSVD. As incoming treasurer, Simon Barton investigated the duties and role of the Honorary Treasurer and after discussion …