Department of Immunology and Allergy

Ankara University, Medical School

06100, Ankara/Turkey

Phone: +90-312-595 65 81

Fax: +90-312-319 00 46

E-mail: bavbek@medicine.ankara.edu.tr

I have been a member of EAACI since 1997. As an allergist, being the most well known representative of allergists in Europe, EAACI, has always had a priority for me to apply to membership position. I have started participating at annual EAACI meetings since 1995, and since then I have understood that EAACI is very welcome to new ideas and new faces, which made me feel very close to this international organization.

My first close relation with EAACI was during an EAACI Summer School, which was held in Turkey in 2000. I worked as one of the members of local organizing committee and this was a great opportunity for me to get in close contact with EAACI. Besides my regular attendance to annual EAACI meetings since then, in 2011, I became more actively involved as the scientific secretary of the XXX. EAACI congress in Istanbul. All these activities and communications gave me a unique opportunity to meet well-known scientists, to hear new developments in the area of my specialty and to develop new friendships from different part of the world.

Three new members were selected to the period of 2011-2013 for Executive Committee Member at Large position and I am one of the new members. I should say that I am very pleased to join EAACI family, which has a real leadership position in allergy field. Taking the advantage of a member of EAACI Executive Committee, I will try to increase awareness and contribution of Turkish Allergists and Immunologists to EAACI activities. As a person, I will put all my energy into getting the most out of this experience with the EAACI Executive Committee; which is like a school for me to learn about science, administrative activities, interpersonal relationship, media, etc. I will carry over all my experience and acquisition to young scientists and physicians in my country.

My main interest is clinic and therefore I spend much more time on clinical activities including seeing patients and doing regular daily visits of hospitalized patients. Additionally, as a full time professor at my Department, I am also responsible for teaching of medical students on outpatients and inpatients settings. My researches areas are mostly about clinical side of various allergic diseases that also keep me busy in the clinic.

I have daily regular responsibilities regarding both inpatient and outpatient allergy clinics and teaching of allergy fellows, and medical students; which occupy majority of my time. One of the crucial issues is to find time, persons and budget for researches. Moreover, administrative procedures of starting a study take too much time. As a representative of a developing county, I believe we have too long way to go and should keep up our energy and passion, and never give up.

Complementary and alternative treatments such as homeopathy, acupuncture etc are one of the realities which we should face in our daily practice. Patients believe them and use them. I personally have an impression that homeopathy, acupuncture etc. can be tried as complementary, not of course as a first choice, to evidence based treatment of allergic diseases.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkey, has said to young people “You need only one thing which is to work hard”. I strongly believe that and working hard, keeping your moral values and enjoying life are most important tips in our professional and personal lives.

Funding of researches is one of the big problems in the area of medicine including allergy. It has always been difficult to get enough support for researches for both basic and clinical subjects and I am hoping that economical issues will not affect future projects of scientists.

Seasonal allergies are a group of allergic diseases that give trouble and have huge impact on quality life of sufferers. Grasses, trees, flowers as main source of the pollens and reasons of seasonal allergies, are the beautiful side of the world and we cannot live without green. Fortunately, many alternative drugs with strong antiallergic activity are available for allergy sufferers but as we all know, they are symptomatic and their activities are temporary.  We need long term and permanent solutions and allergen specific immunotherapy seems to be a promising practice in this respect. There are great achievements in understanding of mechanism of allergic reaction and tolerance to allergens, which will accompany to development of new allergen extracts and adjuvant. Thanks for the basic scientists for their effort to improve life of allergic patients.

I strongly believe that personal and professional life can be perfectly combined if we can succeed in time management. As a mother of two daughters, and wife of a busy neurosurgeon, I deeply had trouble of keeping balance between my personal vs. professional life but we can overcome all obstacles with keeping our passion, enthusiasm and seeing pink side of the coin.

I worked as scientific chair of local organizing committee for EAACI 2011 Istanbul Meeting, and worked hard with EAACI Executive Committee to give chance to all aspects of allergy and clinical immunology to be presented equally.  Considering the background of annual meeting participants, as local organizers and ExCom, we tried to keep the balance between clinical and basic science. I hope that we succeed to reach quite good composition of clinic and preclinical sciences. I am sure that all organizing Committee of Annual the Academy’s meetings consider this balance. On the other hand, I personally believe that primary prevention of allergic diseases, taking into account trends in increasing allergic diseases, should be prioritized in not only as subject of Academy's meetings but also while funding researches.