Welcome to the proceedings of our Second National Conference. We were delighted to see so many of you in Manchester, and hope that those who were unable to be there will enjoy reading these summaries of the excellent lectures and workshops.

The Pituitary Foundation has achieved much in its first 5 years. Our key function is to support and inform all pituitary patients in the UK, as well as their families, friends and carers, and to raise public awareness of pituitary disease. Our patient leaflets have proved extremely valuable, and to date we have distributed over 60,000 copies. Thanks to support from Pharmacia & Upjohn, our ninth title (on pituitary surgery and Radiotherapy) will be available early in 2000.

Over 3,600 copies of our GP Factfile, funded by Eli Lilly & Co, have been distributed in only 6 months. This will assist GPs in the diagnosis and care of pituitary patients. All members also receive our quarterly newsletter Pituitary News, generously supported by Novartis Pharmaceuticals.

We currently have around 7,000 members, increasing by about 140 each month. Though this is excellent, we are only reaching 1 in 10 of the 40,000-70,000 pituitary patients in the UK, so there is still much work to do.

For the last year, support from Ipsen has enabled us to employ a full-time Patient Support Administrator who currently handles around 450 enquiries a month. In addition, our Nurse Counsellor offers advice and support to about 50 people each month.

Our Local Support Groups, run by patients for patients, are a vital aspect of our work. We are indebted to the volunteer Area Co-ordinators who run these Groups. A grant of £166,695 from the National Lottery Charities Board will allow us to develop existing Support Groups, to establish new ones and to train patients and carers to provide support to others by telephone. This 3-year project started in October, and we have two new members of staff who will work alongside the National Co-ordinator.

Our Carer Sub-committee is to look at the needs of all carers of pituitary patients. We have applied for a Department of Health grant to develop this work, and will know shortly if we have been successful.

The Foundation is currently funded entirely through voluntary donations, support from the pharmaceutical industry and the grant from the National Lottery Charities Board. We do not charge for membership, as many are not in a position to pay. We have recently established a Finance and Fund-raising Working Group, and will give considerable emphasis to fund-raising over the coming months.

Funding permitting, our plans include: overhauling our membership database, to improve delivery of our services; development of a Web site; additional and updated patient leaflets; audio cassettes for our visually impaired members; patient videos to complement the popular Understanding Acromegaly video, produced with Ipsen; and an Ethnic Outreach programme to ensure our services are available to everybody.

Sue Thorn has sadly decided to stand down as Honorary Secretary, and we thank her for 5 years of tireless work on our behalf. We welcome Robert Hunt as her replacement.

Our Second National Conference would not have been possible without support from many people, and thanks are due to those who worked behind the scenes on the day, the staff who ensured the meeting's great success (especially our manager), our sponsors, who enabled us to keep registration fees the same as last year, and all our speakers, who gave up their valuable free time to be with us.

Professor Stafford Lightman
University of Bristol

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