RELASE OF THE 2024-2025 UIP ANNUAL REPORT

Let’s NOT just be a “minute”

Dear UIP Members, Colleagues and Friends,

Reaching out to invite you and your UIP Member Society representatives to join the General Council (GC) is my honor and pleasure.

I deeply believe that, if we want to understand our PAST, we must look at our PRESENT; if we want to know our FUTURE, we must look at our PRESENT ACTIONS.

I have been involved as UIP officer for 7 years now and I’m delighted in stating that the FUTURE ahead can be brilliant, as long as our actions and commitments remain solid in the PRESENT.

Change is the core of evolution and those who look only at the PAST are certain to miss the brightest FUTURE.

In this sense, I’d like to deeply thank an extraordinary Executive Committee (EC) vast majority who, in the first two years of my presidency, has demonstrated a never-ending availability to action, problem solving and ethics promotion. The same I express in favor of our Executive Director, David Connor.

In the permanent desire of serving the International Union of Phlebology at best, we have begun October 8-10 General Council (GC) even before its dates, by hosting an online GC on September 13, with the only aim of promoting transparency, members constant update and opportunities for productive open confrontation. I kindly ask you to watch the related recordings in case you did not attend it (confidential GC material available upon request by writing to president@uipmail.org), so to be all on the same page. For the same reason, I kindly ask you to read also the herein attached annual report of the Executive Committee members.

As mentioned during September 13 meeting, in the PRESENT we should remember we are all here honored by the trust of our member Societies: when they voted for us they were convinced we can showcase the best representation possible. This applies to the EC members as well as to each and every person sitting in the GC, in representation of the national Societies.

We are just a “minute” in the 66 years history of our Organization, yet our choices and actions resonate in the future as precedents that can shape the directions of the same global vein-lymphatic practice.

Along this trajectory, the UIP started in France in 1959 from 4 societies, under the French acronym of Union Internationale de Phlebologie: for this reason we are still forced to use the UIP acronym, despite we refer to the Organization as the “International Union of Phlebology”.

Indeed, along the past 66 years, the Organization moved from 4 to 80 member Societies, potentially becoming 89 this year, from an INTERNATIONAL European context, to THE WORLD platform dedicated to veins and lymphatics.

In this perspective, the vast majority of the EC feels it’s time for all the GC to have the courage to make HISTORY by looking at the FUTURE, so that all the world knows that you sit in the same GC in representation of Your Region, not in the context of just an INTERNATIONAL entity, rather in THE World organization dedicated to Phlebology and Lymphology. 

At the same time, this EC vast majority deeply intends to honor the branding and the PAST of the UIP. For this reason, the updated name includes the UIP acronym, just enhanced by a “W”, indicating the vein-lymphatic Worldwide reach-out. With this rationale, the recognition of the French Raymond Tournay award has been proposed as the highest honor: indeed, treasuring the PAST, while recognizing the PRESENT actions leading to the brightest FUTURE.

The name of a Society speaks for its values, its vision, its mission: in our PRESENT we can choose to be a “minute” in the HISTORY of the UIP by being small, silently hiding issues and just a brief arch of time along the decades of the Society, dissolving in many years of passivism ….OR….we can be that fundamental “minute” in time in which the organization turns toward action, positioning, ethics and transparency for THE best FUTURE of the global  most appropriate representation of vein-lymphatic care.

Following this same vision, in my capacity of 2023-2027 president, I proposed the constitutional change impeding whoever has been president to run again in EC elections: the turn-over is the base for a physiological advancement toward the best possible FUTURE.

With this vision and mission, the vast majority of the EC has been operating in the last two years, as I do hope the EC who will join my following two years of presidency will showcase, always agreeing to disagreeing, as long as morality and proper code of conduct are followed.

With this hope, I look forward for being all together in Buenos Aires in such historic GC, after which toasting together at the PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE of THE Organization advocating for proper vein-lymphatic care in the world.

At full disposal at my contacts (president@uipmail.org ; +39 3498012304), I deeply thank all of you for your time, effort and eventual will of not being just a passing by “minute”.

prof. Sergio Gianesini, MD PhD, FACS

University of Ferrara (ITALY)

Uniformed Services University

of Health Sciences (Bethesda, USA)
International Union of Phlebology 2023-2027 president