EUROPE
Special Section: Building a better radiologist

For Professor Holger Pettersson, president of the European Association of Radiology (EAR), there is no such thing as a typical day. One day he might be seeing to administrative duties at Sweden's Lund University Hospital, where he is a professor of radiology. Another afternoon, he could be telecommunicating around the globe from his home in the seaside village of Lumma. Less frequently, he might find himself in Nairobi, Kenya, for his work as a radiology education advisor for the World Health Organization. For a man who has made 60 trips spanning six continents in one year, a journey to Africa or South America is par for the course.

"I work different days, different weeks, different countries. It is an amusing mix," Pettersson said.

It's a mix that might seem to leave little time for hobbies. But he does manage to indulge in his passion for collecting classic literature and religious manuscripts from the 15th and 16th centuries.

Pettersson, now virtually a household name in the European radiology community, knew instinctively by the age of 14 that he would someday become a doctor, even though there were no family associations with the profession to lead him in that direction. He went on to study at Lund University, obtaining a specialist qualification in radiology in 1975. At the time he was a resident, training was much less structured than it is today.

"It was up to us to find knowledge. We were not fed information," he said.

Realizing that he wanted to work in a "softer" part of the field, Pettersson turned to pediatric radiology. He received a subspecialist qualification in the discipline in 1978, and in the early 1980s he completed a fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, where he used new imaging technologies to assess musculoskeletal disease. After returning to Sweden in 1982, Pettersson shifted to general skeletal radiology and ultimately became chair of radiology and deputy medical director at Lund University.

In 1991, he cofounded the Nycomed Amersham Intercontinental Continuing Education in Radiology (NICER) Institute in collaboration with Dr. Harald Ostensen, who at the time was responsible for internal education at Nycomed and now works at the WHO. NICER organized 50 courses in 22 nations on all continents and published a range of educational materials in multiple languages prior to its closing last December. The closing was due in part to financial reasons.

Pettersson remains active in global radiology education through his work for the WHO. He cochairs the organization's radiology education and training group and is a member of the WHO expert panel on radiation.

"Of the six billion people in the world, four billion will have no access or limited access to diagnostic imaging tools. And if machines are there, there might not be any radiologists or technicians. We are trying to set up an educational program composed of very basic manuals and seminars for use by nonradiological health personnel," he said. "In October, for example, the WHO program is running a week-long seminar in Nairobi, which is supported by Kenya's national healthcare organization. This work in building education around the world is very rewarding."