Prof. Mami Yamasaki

Dear ISPN member,

It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that earlier this week Prof. Mami Yamasaki, past President of the Japanese Society of Paediatric Neurosurgery, Host of the 2016 ISPN Annual meeting and ISPN Executive Board member, lost her battle against Leukaemia.

At the time of our hugely successful annual meeting in Kobe that Prof. Mami Yamasaki organised she began feeling unwell and shortly after the end of the meeting Leukaemia was diagnosed. Since then she has been undergoing intensive treatment and had requested that she step down from the ISPN Executive Board. In the hope and expectation that she would return to full health we persuaded her to remain on the Board and I hope that the support expressed by so many of you helped her in the very difficult time she went through.

We shall remember Mami not only as the organiser of the wonderful annual meeting in Kobe, but also as a warm and compassionate person, dedicated to the ISPN, the science of our discipline and the care and wellbeing of Children with Neurosurgical conditions. We will hold a special ‘In Memoriam’ session for her at our annual meeting in Denver and we will explore ways to recognise her contribution to both science and the ISPN going forwards.

If any of you would like to share with me your memories of Mami I will happily pass them on to her family as a sign of support from her ISPN family.

With best wishes,

William Harkness
ISPN President