Monday, March 27, 2006

South Africa Roadshow - Pretoria

After the meeting in London, my wife and I travelled to South Africa invited by TecMed, the new distributor of the Greenlight laser in this country. My task is to lecture in Pretoria, Johanesburg, Cape Town and Durban, during the launch of Greenlight PVP in this country.
Just after landing, a driver picked us up and took us to the Welgevonden game park, a private park where we would be welcomed. The idea was to participate in a game drive prior to the roadshow and the tough task of lecturing everyday in a different city. We would sleep in the park before leaving for Pretoria.
I was so lucky to see a group of lions (a wonderful male lion and three female lions) an elephant, rhinos and other animals during the daytime. But the most amazing experience took place during the night. We took the car, and used very potent torches to localize the animals at great distance. The light is reflected by the animals' retinas and shines allowing us to locate them. We witnessed three female lions chasing a zebra in front of our car. Luckily, the cebra escaped, and the three female lions and the male later came about and roared loudly just by our car. These cars are not closed, and I swear it was impressive to have those big lions roaring just a couple of meters away from us. An experience I will never forget.
TecMed CEO, Mike Milford, drove the car. He is in love with Africa, its nature and its animals, and his enthusiasm is contagious. An african saying "if you drink from the Zambeze river, you will always thirst his water and this thirst will never be quenched" will surely prove to be true with me. I am sure I will do my best to come back to this wonderful country.
We spent the night in wonderful bungalows with a wonderful view. There is a small lake in front of them and many animals came to drink water. I woke up at 5 am and sat in the terrace to enjoy the sunrise, with the lions roaring in the distance. Maybe this time they managed to kill their pray.
Then we travelled to Pretoria where the first lecture should take place.

We had approximately 30 people. South Africa only has 200 urologists, which seems a low number in comparison whit the 2000 urologists we have in Spain. The technique was very well received among the urologists present in the room, and some of them expressed their interest in adopting PVP as their preferred treatment of BPH.

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