47^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neonatology and Paediatric Intensive Care (GNPI)

Dear members of the GNPI, dear colleagues

"One happy hope is worth more than ten dry realities" - it is not difficult at this time to agree with Franz Grillparzer.

We do not want to give up hope that the 47^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neonatology and Paediatric Intensive Care will take place in Vienna from 17 - 19 June 2021 as a face-to-face event - this is still our goal and wish and we are working towards it with all our energy.

However, as you all know, it is difficult to plan ahead in the current situation and an end to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic cannot be predicted. Since we are convinced that we need scientific exchange in our field of expertise and because we are determined to implement our programme, which has already been planned in great detail, we have decided to plan this annual meeting from now on not only as an attendance congress but also in parallel in digital format in order to be prepared for all eventualities.

We are doing this with the same enthusiasm and dedication as before, and are convinced that we will be able to offer a particularly appealing, informative and attractive annual meeting in any case.

Detailed information on the implementation, i.e. whether it will be a face-to-face event with or without restrictions and a hygiene concept, or a digital congress (or even a hybrid event), will be announced in the spring of next year. We will continue to work intensively on the content in advance and present a very detailed preliminary programme to you at the beginning of December, which will be updated regularly.

We would like to ask you to send us already now exciting contributions as abstracts. Your accepted abstracts will be presented in each programme format as a lecture or ePoster. We hope for your support and look forward to any form of exchange with you.

With warmest collegial greetings

Your Angelika Berger and Katrin Klebermaß-Schrehof & Team