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The Round Table Foundation has decided to confer its inaugural

Humanitarian Award to

Harald Østensen
Cluny, France

For many years Harald Østensen has exemplified decency and benevolence by organizing teaching courses and supporting appropriate means of medical imaging, particularly in countries with limited resources.

The award was presented at a private ceremony in Potsdam, Germany, on 25 May 2007.

Dr. Harald Østensen received his medical education and training in Germany and Norway. He worked as a general practitioner and later as a radiologist in hospitals all over Norway.

Until the early 1990s, Østensen was the Managing Director of the NICER courses - continuing education in radiology for world regions lacking the range of medical education available in many rich countries. He persuaded Nycomed Imaging, a company in Oslo, Norway, to support the project and, together with Holger Pettersson of the University of Lund, Sweden, built up a global program, enlisting well-known teachers in radiology from all over the world. The goal was untainted education of the highest possible quality.

Østensen then joined the World Health Organization at their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in charge of global medical imaging.

Again, he put his emphasis on basic and applied teaching and edited numerous books and brochures which are distributed free of charge.

One of his main goals in Geneva is the introduction of digital radiography in countries with few resources. He summarized this project himself:

"A majority of radiographs produced in developing countries and especially in small- and mid-size hospitals are of very poor diagnostic quality. The main reason is that there are problems related to supply of film and chemicals, and to insufficient film processing facilities (dark-rooms not dark, no clean water, no temperature control of chemicals). In addition, there is a general and nearly total lack of radiologists to conduct examinations and to interpret radiographs. Both of these issues are contributing to inferior, if any, possibilities for radiological examinations for people be it in urban or in rural areas.

"None of the above mentioned difficulties should be assumed to become less significant within the next decades. Therefore, WHO has been looking for new and affordable technologies to counteract both inferior image quality and lack of specialists. The obvious answer to this is to introduce digital imaging facilities and to facilitate low-cost teleradiology solutions within the individual countries.

"Until recently, however, such technologies have been produced solely by major manufacturers, keeping price levels totally out of range for countries in need.

"Over the last two-three years, however, small "outsider" companies have started manufacturing high-quality digital solutions – mainly CR-solutions – at prices fully acceptable.

"Such equipment is being tested in an African country to see how it can comply with poor infrastructure and tropical climatic conditions, and so far, the project has been very successful.

"No doubt that this type of upgraded diagnostic imaging service will be extremely beneficial to the population of any developing country, offering state of the art health services even to small- and mid-size hospitals."