Remembering Kees Westermann and his impact on the HHT community
In memoriam, Kees Westermann
In February this year, Kees Westermann passed away quite unexpectedly, at the age of 85 years.
Kees started to work in the St. Antonius Hospital in Utrecht / Nieuwegein (the Netherlands) as a pulmonologist in 1978. He was a passionate pulmonologist, with a broad interest, much more than only medical issues. He was a social man and on almost every subject, he had a story to tell. At the end of the eighties, he became interested in HHT and more and more HHT patients came to the St. Antonius Hospital. He visited Bob White, who brought him in contact with Cure HHT, at that time under the name ‘International HHT Foundation Inc.’. With his enthusiasm, Kees managed to form a multidisciplinary team for HHT at the beginning of the nineties, which was actually the start of the HHT Center of the St. Antonius Hospital, currently the only recognized HHT Center in the Netherlands. Kees was part of the small international group of pioneers in HHT care and research, amongst them Bob White, Peter Terry, Doug Marchuk, Michelle Letarte, Henri Plauchu, Elisabetta Buscarini, Paul Vase, Mike Hughes, and Claire Shovlin. He joined the very first international HHT Conference in Edinburgh in 1996 and organized the second one, in 1997, in Curacao. He also organized the international conference in 2003 in Bonaire, for a much larger group than in 1997. He belonged to the first members of the Global Research and Medical Advisory Board of Cure HHT.
He performed clinical research in the St. Antonius Hospital and for molecular-biological research, he started collaboration with the team of prof. Christine Mummery – a collaboration that still exists. He was involved in the start of a patient organization in the Netherlands in the nineties. When he retired in 2003, he was awarded knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, because of all his efforts for the Dutch patients with HHT.
After his retirement, he continued working for the HHT Center for more than 10 years– mostly in research activities and communication. Last but not least: every year he organized a meeting of the HHT team (inclusive of the researchers from the LUMC) on his island in Loosdrecht.
The HHT team of the St. Antonius Hospital is thankful for all Kees has done for the HHT Center and the patients with HHT. We will miss him, and our thoughts go to the relatives of Kees: we wish them strength.
Written by Hans-Jurgen Mager