Prague, April 30, 2013 – [CD-EUDNews]. The first European Health Conference (EHC) started on Monday, April 29 and will end Saturday, May 4. About 600 participants came from 38 different countries including delegates from North and South America.
This intensive 5-day Conference on health is intended to harmoniously blend the health approach with our strong spiritual values.
Healing is the motto of the conference and gives emphasis to better understand the ministry of healing that our church is called to endorse. In his welcome message, Doctor Viriato Ferreira, Inter-European Region (EUD) Health Ministry Director and organizer of the EHC, pointed out the value of healing that all of us need to consider whether on the giving or receiving end. “Healing from what?” was repeated several times by Doctor Ferreira, “we have different motives but one common need.”
Doctor Ferreira organized this conference in partnership with Doctor Stephan Cooper and Doctor Nadezda Ivanova, Region Health Ministry directors of the Trans-European (TED) and the Euro-Asia (EAD) respectively.
The whole Conference is organized in plenary sessions and workshops, focused on the general motto of healing. The different speakers come from major Adventist World Health Institutions, as well as from the Adventist General Conference in Washington. Among the lecturers there is Doctor Peter Landless, the new Health Ministry director at a General Conference level, substituting Doctor Allan Handysides, who will retire in September, also present at the Conference. Ted Wilson, Adventist General Conference President, will be present to offer a devotional on Thursday evening.
Doctor Bertil Wiklander, (TED President) opened the Conference, greeting all the participants in the name of Doctor Bruno Vertallier (EUD President) and Doctor Gulliermo Biaggi (EAD President). “This PanEuropean Conference is the answer to a need to share the beautiful message of healing with the world around us”, said Wiklander.
The Conference is held in the Prague Diplomat Hotel, offering enough space for all participants, even though the number of attendees is so high and we had to expand to an overflow room.
“I’m happy to be here,” said a participant, “because I know that the whole Conference is intended to give concrete and realistic answers to the important question of healing. I was impressed when Doctor Ferreira said that we have to alleviate the daily stresses and disappointments of life and be healed.”
Wholeness and health have been an emphasis of the Seventh-day Adventist church since the 1860s when the church began. The health ministry of the Adventist Church includes a healthcare delivery system of church-operated clinics and hospitals throughout the world. There are top-quality medical universities and schools of learning, along with "bare-essentials" clinics serving the developing world. Through all of these avenues, the goal of Health Ministries is to make people whole in an imperfect and disease-ravaged world.
To learn more about this issue, please visit the following web page: http://healthministries.com/
pictures: 1. Viriato Ferreira, EUD Health Ministry Director; 2. The Audience;
