ECCMID Congress. This year the Barcelona International Convention Centre (CCIB) will be hosting fourteen of the top European and international medical congresses. The largest of these is the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), which will gather together over 8,000 delegates from 10 to 13 May. This European event was previously held at the CCIB in 2008. In fact, Barcelona is the only city to have hosted the ECCMID on more than one occasion in the past 10 years, something which, according to Marc Rodríguez, general manager of the CCIB, “demonstrates the city’s excellent positioning in the sector for organising major international medical events”.
Last year, medical conferences represented 23.8% of all association events and 71.4% of the CCIB’s total revenue in this international segment for holding medical meetings. This trend is set to continue in 2014, thus consolidating the Barcelona centre as a global benchmark for holding top-level medical events, some of which have made Barcelona their annual headquarters.
This is the case with GI Cancer, a world congress on gastrointestinal cancer (from 25 to 28 June), which has been held at the CCIB since the beginning of its activities in 2005. Organised by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), the main European body, the event will be focused on training specialists and publicising the latest developments in treating this disease.
Other international conferences that will be hosted by the CCIB this year include: the annual event organised by the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), which will bring together 6,000 delegates in September; the 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health, expected to welcome over 2,000 delegates in late October; the fifth congress of the European Academy of Paediatric Societies (EAPS) in October, bringing together 1,500 professionals; and ISUOG 2014, the World Congress on Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, which expects to attract over 2,500 gynaecologists worldwide to the city in mid-September. As regards national events, the CCIB will be the venue for the 56th Congress of the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology.
