PENSA Newsletter January-April 2009, Vol.10 No.1 Message From Editor Dear PENSA members: In the past few months, most of our member countries have suffered the economic crisis that affects nearly the whole world. In addition, newly emerging disease such as Influenza A/H1N1/Mexico/2009 also jeopardizes the situation. Thus, it will be a tough time which we must joining hands together to face the hardness which are expected to persist for few years. Cooperation in the largest scale among the Asian countries has been shown through the ASEAN. It is a pity that The ASEAN Summit which was expected to be an initiation of the members to solve the economic crisis has to be canceled because of the riots in Pattaya and Bangkok during the Songkran Festival. We (The PENSA Center) would like to thanks all our friends who send the e-mails showing their concerns about the situation in Bangkok. Luckily, it was solved peacefully. PENSA is an example of cooperation among Asian countries in a much smaller scale. Providing appropriate nutritional support to the right person at the right time is one thing we can do to reduce the cost and improve the patients’ outcome. We hope that the Swine Influenza will be under control before June which our PENSA 2009 Congress will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Dr. Herbans Dhillon and her team are willing to meet all of you there. The registration will still be available through website pensa2009.org While waiting excitingly for the coming Congress, you still can learn some from 5 abstracts from the 12th PENSA Congress in Manila, Philippines. The first paper is “The ESPEN/ESPGHAN Paediatric PN Guidelines and their relevance to Asia” by Patrick A Ball from New South Wales, Australia. The second paper is “The dietitian’s role in feeding cancer patients: An overview” by Tilakavati Karupaiah from Malaysia. The third paper “Impact of Immunonutrition on host response” by Kazuhiko Fukatsu from Japan. The forth one is “Home nutritional support” by Luciana B Sultanto from Indonesia and the last one is “Impact of micronutrient deficiency in critical illness” by Krishnan Sriram from USA. If you want to learn more about nutrition, please do no hesitate to register to the coming Congress.