Medical Commission

A medical service for mountaineers!

“I am pregnant, can I continue with mountaineering? Do I need vaccinations before I go trekking in the Andes? How can I prevent altitude sickness? What is the best treatment for hypothermia?”

We are here to give mountaineers reliable, easy-to-understand answers to these kinds of questions. We give practical advice and the most up to date recommendations on medical issues in the mountains. To do this, we function as a world-wide forum of doctors who are specialised in the different fields of mountain medicine.

The mission of the UIAA Medical Commission is to increase the knowledge about mountain medicine among doctors and mountaineers all over the world. You can download the full text of our mission, objectives and goals.
 
We collect, evaluate and discuss medical data and try to reach an international consensus on difficult issues of prevention and treatment of illness and injuries. We regularly publish recommendation papers which are available to everybody on the UIAA webpage.

All the members of the commission are doctors specialised in mountain medicine, and we make sure that every year more doctors get this training. We check the quality of the different courses of mountain medicine for doctors and in collaboration with ISMM and CISA/ICAR we have set standards for the International Diploma of Mountain Medicine. In ten countries our members have founded national societies which organise courses in mountain medicine for doctors and mountaineers. 

To continue to improve the information we give to climbers, we arrange international congresses in collaboration with our partners ISMM, MedCom ICAR and WMS. We continue to support the International Society of Mountain Medicine (ISMM), which conducts scientific research on mountain medicine. We also work closely with other international organisations dealing with mountain medicine, such as specialists in Olympic sports medicine.

You can download a short history of our commission and a list of our members.