Dear Colleague,

We are contacting you at this time for collection of the dues for membership of the IFCPC.  We really appreciate the contributions that you and your members make to the success of the Federation.

The annual subscription has been kept as low as possible for many years at $5 US per member per year.  While some of the larger societies such as the UK with 1800 members contribute a large portion of the total annual revenues, all societies’ contributions are important and underwrite the ability of the Federation to fulfil its goals.

At a recent meeting of the senior officers we restated our mission as a Federation:

‘The group agreed that the primary and general ambitions of the Federation were to help to reduce the burden of lower genital tract cancer, in particular cervical cancer.  The group agreed that the IFCPC had different responsibilities in different regions. 

The primary responsibility in the developed world was to maintain standards and to promote improvement through quality assurance, education and training. In the emerging economies the emphasis of the Federation is different and should be to respond to individual needs: focusing on  training and education in colposcopy and the treatment of pre-invasive disease in support of regional initiatives by local societies and by other international agencies.’ 

The Federation has limited funds, although Board members are investigating strategies to increase our income. The total from subscription income is about $45,000 a year and the running costs of the administrative support, IT and education budgets equal or exceed this. This is why each contribution, however small from each society is so important to the success of the whole group.  Receiving your contribution annually, rather than triennially at a World Congress, also factors into our success in meeting our educational and programming goals.   We have attached a letter outlining your society’s dues contribution, as well as instructions how to wire or provide credit card inforamtion for payment.  A form to provide any relevent website changes for your society is also included. 

I hope you will see very soon now, an improvement in our website at www.ifcpc.org. Jeffery Tan is improving the site and has several educational inititives planned, so please keep returning to the site from time to time to review our progress. Christine Bergeron is leading our educational initiatives which we will describe in more detail after the next Board meeting in Malmo. 

So once again, thank you to you and your members for your continued support and I hope we will have a chance to meet at, or if possible before, the next World Congress in Rio in 2011. 

Best wishes, 

Mr. Patrick G. Walker

President