Malaysian Orthopedic Association

In 1967, the Malaysian Orthopaedic Association (MOA) was formed with Dr. Abdul Majid Ismail as the first president. Founding members included Dr Selvakumar, Dr M Sivananthan, Dr Kannan Kutty, Dr. Pretam Singh, Dr Balasubramaniam, Dr Balasingam, Dr Mahmood Merican, Dr Mohd Iqbal, Dr Sachdev Singh, Dr Subir Sengupta and Dr K Thambyrajah. The first Malaysian Orthopaedic Congress was organized in 1968 and it was attended by a total of sixty delegates from various countries. In the following year, the first Malaysian-Singapore combined orthopaedic meeting was held in Singapore In 1973, the MOA took up the responsibility to host the 4th Congress of Western Pacific Orthopaedic Association (WPOA) in Kuala Lumpur After the establishment of the ASEAN Orthopaedic Association (AOA) in 1984, and the MOA hosted the 4th AOA Congress in 1987. The main objective of this association is to promote the advancement of science, arts and practice of orthopaedic surgery and allied science as stated in the constitution. With the increasing number of orthopaedic surgeons over the years, the association recognized the need to ensure overall development of our members in various aspects of practice. Many measures have been taken especially over the past few years to provide opportunities to achieve this aim.In order to encourage continuing medical education (CME) among members, MOA appointed regional representatives for five geographical regions (North, East Coast, South, Central and East Malaysia) of the country and provided financial assistance for them to organize local scientific meetings. Starting last year, various subspecialty interest groups were formed under the umbrella of the MOA. These groups serve to coordinate reaching and training activities for orthopaedic surgeons interested in these fields, and to support the regional CME programs by providing speakers and teaching materials.With the increasing number of orthopaedic related basic science and clinical researches, MOA published the first orthopaedic supplement of Medical Journal of Malaysia (MJM) in 2000. To encourage more orthopaedic surgeons to involve in research activities, the MOA has recently formed a research committee that look into the possibilities of providing technical and financial support for research projects especially for members not attached to teaching institution.In order to promote humanitarian values among members, a medical relief committee was formed at the end of 2004. The committee swung into action when several countries including Malaysia were affected by the tsunami disaster. MOA has served as a hub to deliver more than USD 300,000 worth of medical supplies donated by various orthopaedic organizations like Chinese Orthopaedic Association, Philippines Orthopaedic Association and Chiba Hospital from Japan to the affected areas in Banda Aceh and Sri Lanka.