Silvio Tatti will also chair a Board meeting at the Latin American Federation meeting in Cartegena, Columbia in October. We had a successful board meeting in Cape Town last October, at the FIGO meeting. Once again we ran our Five Continents Symposium with expert speakers from Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Africa. These symposia allow us to learn from each other’s experience of tackling the cervical cancer burden in different parts of the world, under different circumstances and with different technologies and infrastructure.

We are all turning our attention to the plans for the World Congress of Colposcopy, IFCPC in Rio, Brazil 4-7^th July 2011. Please visit the congress website which is starting up: www.colposcopy2011.com.br.

Thanks to Jim Bentley and with help from Kathy Poole and others in the administrative offices we have improved our financial position. As we receive little if any commercial sponsorship, we rely heavily on subscription income. This has to support the secretariat, the travel for Board members to meetings, the development of the website and teaching courses on all five continents. We have to provide seed money for each world congress if it is required and in recent times have had to supplement funding of congresses. However, I do believe we could and should distribute some more of our reserves for the good of women in our mission:

What I would like is the view of the membership as to which initiatives we might consider. Below is a list of possibilities that I have thought of, any or all of which might be valid, but I would most like your best suggestions of new ideas:

1. For the World Congress, subsidise registration fees for juniors and nurses and reduce registration fees for those from developing countries based on world bank economic status - Actually we have done this and it will be in place for Rio 2011!!!

2. Improve the quality of educational material on the IFCPC website with free access to all - Actually Jeffrey Tan is already doing this but will be expanding the initiative. Please look at the TUNA section on the IFCPC website

3. Give educational grants of $1000 for IFCPC curriculum approved teaching courses in developing countries and provide some help for the expenses of IFCPC requested speakers. Christine Bergeron and the education committee work hard to support initiatives in this area. Should we do more of these and/or should we increase the level of support? In recent times we have done this for Georgia, Lithuania, and we are contributing to courses in Kosovo and Peru in the coming months.

4. Can we help the poorest countries with a grant to develop local educational material for women? – often it is empowering local leaders and advocates for women that is the first step.

5. Can we offer each country or continent free registration and travel and accommodation support for the World Congress to an individual that their national society believe will be an important key leader in the field in the years ahead?

6. Should we offer a competitive scholarship for an exchange visit between a poorer country and a developed country to further knowledge and collaboration?
Please let me know if you like any of these and your own ideas

Jacob Bornstein and his Nomenclature committee are working hard on the latest proposed revision of our terminology last updated in Barcelona. There will be a special session in Rio on this topic and subsequent to that the Board will decide precisely which changes are adopted.

Walter Prendiville is working in an update of our constitution and by-laws and proposed changes will be circulated six months prior to Rio.

In many ways the website will be our main means of communication and Jeff Tan is working really hard to improve this and expand the educational potential this has for distance learning.

So I hope you will feel that there is a large amount of work being carried out on your behalf. Please let me know your views on our progress. The World congress after Rio in 2011 will be London 2014. In Rio we will be receiving bids for the 2017 congress which will probably be in North America but it would be wonderful if it could be in Africa sometime soon. At present we rotate through the continents but we have only a few established links with Africa where Lynette Denny carries out such important work with AORTIC with whom we hope to collaborate more in the future.

IFCPC remains an organisation with minimal commercial influence and is dedicated to sharing knowledge and experience in the fight against cervical cancer in all five continents – thank you for your support in helping us to achieve our goals.


Patrick Walker