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From the WGA Executive Office
Kuldev Singh, MD MPH, Executive Vice President, World Glaucoma Association
I am pleased to announce that the next World Glaucoma Congress (WGC) will be held in Paris, France from June 29th to July 2nd, 2011. The venue for the meeting will be the Palais des Congrès, which has hosted several large ophthalmology meetings in the past. European cities have been great venues for prior glaucoma meetings and it makes sense for WGA to rotate through this continent every six to eight years. By 2011, it will have been six years from the first WGC which was held in Vienna back in 2005. After having been to Singapore (2007) and Boston, (2009) a return to Europe appears logical.
Paris is arguably the leading congress destination in the world with over 900 meetings and 600,000 delegates each year. There has not been a large international glaucoma congress in Paris over the past decade. The city boasts two international airports and collectively, nearly 14,000 flights each week. There are very few regions of the world from which one has difficulty getting to Paris with a single connecting flight. Many residents of Central and Western Europe will be able to reach Paris easily via automobile or high-speed train. The city has a highly efficient and inexpensive transportation network which I had the opportunity to experience first hand when I visited the venue last month. The venue itself is superb and will allow us to have what promises to be the largest global glaucoma meeting to date. There are over 9,200 hotel rooms of all levels within walking distance from the Palais des Congrès. The Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower are only respectively ten and fifteen minutes by foot from the convention center which is bordered by a spacious park. It is difficult to imagine a better venue or a more beautiful city.