On May 10th and 11th, The Bulgarian organisation VIOM (a patient organisation for thyroid diseases) organised the first patient meeting for Central/South-Eastern European countries on thyroid diseases, at the same time as the First Scientific Conference for Central and Eastern Europe on the Thyroid Diseases.

The goal of this meeting was sharing best practices and support with starting a patient organisation. Patient Representative Marika Porrey was present at this meeting and reported that the meeting was a positive experience.

It gave participants the opportunity to learn from each other, share projects or materials, and giving evidence based information to questions from patients. For example, through these new connections of this meeting developed patient materials can hopefully be translated into different languages.

Marika writes that although it was difficult to get participants from all Eastern-European Countries, the meeting consisted mainly of participants from Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Bulgaria and the Netherlands.