Dr Wayne Morriss

President of the WFSA

Dear Colleagues

The last few months have been exceptionally busy. The WFSA Board met for two days in San Francisco in October immediately before Anaesthesiology 2023, hosted by the American Society. As usual, the congress itself was excellent, including a WFSA panel on global issues related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). I am grateful to my fellow Board Members

Carolina Haylock-Loor and Daniela Filipescu for sharing their important perspectives; many thanks also to Dr Odi Ehie for her great presentation. 

As a global organisation, WFSA works hard to put our DEI words into action. We not only strive for better gender representation, but also reasonable balance between geographical regions and between high-resource and lower-resource countries. This is reflected in the selection of membership of our 11 Permanent Committees for the 2024-2026 term. Thank you to all who applied and to members of the selection committee who carefully assessed hundreds of applications. The committee lists can be found on our website (https://wfsahq.org/get-involved/serve-on-a-committee) and committee chairs, deputy chairs and members will be formally presented to the General Assembly in Singapore. 

The 2024 General Assembly will be held on 3rd March and is a vitally important meeting for WFSA and our global specialty. Your society should have received some important emails from the WFSA Secretary, Professor Filipescu, and myself in recent weeks, including the full list of nominees for Board and Council for the 2024-2026 period, and information about your Society’s delegate entitlement. You should also have received the agenda for the General Assembly and accompanying papers (including constitutional documents) at the beginning of December. Please check your Junk folder if you haven’t seen these emails, or contact our CEO, Kristine Stave (kristine.stave@wfsahq.org) if you have any questions or concerns. The agenda and papers are also available on the WFSA website.  

We are now less than three months away from WCA2024 and excitement is building! The Singapore World Congress will provide a unique opportunity for our global specialty to connect, learn and share. Registrations are building nicely, with over 2500 confirmed attendees from more than 100 countries. We have been able to secure funding for 60 early-career anaesthesiologists to join us as WCA Scholars in Singapore – our biggest scholar group ever. We have also been delighted with the response to our call for abstracts with over 1,400 case reports and research studies submitted. Please continue to encourage your Society’s members to register and make their travel arrangements as soon as possible. 

The Harold Griffith Session on 5th March will be one highlight amongst many at WCA2024. The session honours WFSA’s first president and we are delighted to have two amazing Harold Giffith speakers in Singapore: Dr Jannicke Mellin-Olsen and Prof Kevin Fong. Jannicke will be speaking on “Quality of care – a human perspective” and Kevin will be presenting “We are wrong about risk”. Both speakers have had incredible careers. Kevin previously worked with NASA, and you may be interested in his BBC podcast “13 Minutes to the Moon” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2). 

If you can’t join us in-person in Singapore, you can still take part by registering for our Virtual WCA. Plenary sessions will be livestreamed during the congress and all content will be recorded and available on-demand shortly after it is presented live. Translation into languages such as French and Spanish will be available for all sessions. Virtual registration details are available at https://www.wca2024.org/registration/. 

I’ve had a busy travel and meeting schedule during the last three months. As well as Anesthesiology in San Francisco, I’ve attended Member Society conferences in Australia, New Zealand, India and Azerbaijan. Many thanks to colleagues in these countries for their hospitality. It’s always an honour to be invited to a conference as WFSA President but the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan at the beginning of December was particularly noteworthy – the Azerbaijan Society recently joined WFSA, and it was their country’s first international anaesthesiology congress. Congratulations to the Azerbaijan Society for organising a great conference. 

Congratulations also to the Sierra Leone Society for joining the WFSA family on World Anaesthesia Day on 16th October. WFSA now has 136 Member Societies representing anaesthesiologists in almost 150 countries worldwide. 

Since my last message in September, I’ve also participated virtually in multiple conferences and other events, including the SARAF Congress in Guinea, West Africa; national conferences in Russia, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Egypt, Brazil, Korea, Nigeria and Morocco; two webinars related to WFSA’s annual theme of Anaesthesia and Cancer Care; events in Indonesia and the Philippines; and graduation ceremonies for Paediatric Anaesthesia Training in Africa (PATA) and the College of Anaesthesiologists of East, Central and Southern Africa (CANECSA). Thanks to the organisers for including WFSA in your events. 

In other news, WFSA recently launched a campaign to encourage all Member Societies to endorse the Santa Cruz Declaration on Patient Blood Management. The declaration outlines principles of blood management in the perioperative period and was first signed by Member Societies in the Latin American region in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in September 2022. You can find more details, including an editable letter of support, on our website. We will announce the signatories to the Declaration at a special ceremony at the World Congress. 

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on our global anaesthesiology family and the amazing work you are doing around globe. Our thoughts are especially with those working in areas of conflict and unrest. I hope that the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 will be happy and safe for you all, and I look forward to seeing you in Singapore in March! 

Prof. Dr. Karamehemet YILDIZ

Board Member, Turkish Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care
Project Coordinator

Dear Dr. Ergali MIYERBEKOV,

We have successfully completed our task in Almaty and have returned home. I would like to once again extend my heartfelt thanks for your kind invitation, support, and interest throughout this project.

The hospitality, warm cooperation, and problem-solving skills demonstrated by you, Dr. Gulshat, Dr. Sabina, Dr. Bekhzat, and the entire team were exceptional. In particular, your leadership and management of the entire process were carried out with great professionalism. The warm welcome, the social events you organized, and all the services you provided were excellently executed. The scientific quality of the meeting was very high, and the contributions during the discussion sessions were highly productive.

On behalf of my team and the Turkish Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, I would like to express our deepest gratitude to you and your colleagues. I look forward to meeting you again at well-organized medical events worldwide—Istanbul, or Almaty.

By the way,
We are looking forward to seeing you again at our major TARK 2024 Congress in Antalya.

Best regards,