International collaboration is more important than ever, and we hear from Prof Bernard Fraysse about a collaboration that grew out of the very successful IFOS meeting in Paris in 2017.
The IFOS meeting in Paris in June 2017 was obviously a huge success. I’m really interested to hear that the French ENT Society (SFORL) and IFOS are going to be collaborating in the coming years. How did this collaboration come about?
Indeed the IFOS meeting in Paris, organised in collaboration with the French ENT society and IFOS society, was a huge success with more than 8500 delegates from 132 different countries. The next IFOS meeting will be held in Vancouver in 2021. The French ENT society and IFOS felt that there was a need to propose concrete global actions to ENT professionals during the next four years according to the IFOS bylaws. It has been prepared and presented to both Board of Directors (SFORL and IFOS) and some budgets have been approved to run these actions.
Prof Bernard Fraysse.
How do you see collaborations working in the future?
Both organisations have decided to invest some time and money on the following missions over the next four years: - Create free online access to educational material for all ENT specialists on the new IFOS website, which is currently being developed.
- Organise at least two training courses every year in different continents (IFOS World Master Course
- IFOS WMC)
- Encourage close international relationships among young physicians with the creation of the IFOS Young Otolaryngologists Committee
- Give support to humanitarian actions
Tell me about the educational materials you will be making available.
Our goal is to create a free online library to be accessible for ENT professionals all around the world. We wish to provide content from many countries in many different formats (PDF, videos, articles etc) and different languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese etc). Our aim is to provide a powerful search tool within the IFOS website that would allow any ENT doctor to access the largest database in the world. The IFOS website will be the ‘Google’ of ENT.
To do so, we are working closely with national societies who have already agreed to provide some content that is currently only accessible for their members. Doctors from all around the world will therefore be able to get access to new content, surgical techniques and case studies from other countries.
We are very pleased to welcome on the Educational Standing Committee the following eminent specialists:
Agricio Crespo – Brazil
Thomas Deitmer – Germany
Johannes Fagan – South Africa
Emmanuel Lescanne – France
Jaime Marco – Spain
Peter Sheng-Po-Hao – China
George Tavartkiladze – Russia
Tatsuya Yamasoba – Japan
Their role will be to follow this very exciting project and to generate new content.
I understand that several IFOS training courses will be taking place every year, the first of which is in Peru – tell me more.
In 2018, we have already worked on two innovative courses entitled ‘Training the trainers’. Each course will be dedicated to young physicians who have already graduated and will be the next leaders in their field of expertise. The first one on Global Hearing Rehabilitation will be held in Lima on 11-13 November 2018, and will be organised by Milan Profant, Hector Ruiz and myself. We are very pleased to announce that it will be a joint meeting with the Pan American Society and in collaboration with The World Health Organization.
The second one on head and neck will be organised by Dominique Chevalier and Johan Fagan in Cape Town on 1-2 December.
All information regarding these courses will soon be available on the new IFOS website:
www.ifosworld.org
Meeting in Paris between SFORL and IFOS.
There is a great emphasis on ‘young’ ENT surgeons these days, and you have your own committee – is that correct? Do you think that IFOS could bring national groups of young surgeons together, and perhaps encourage all national ENT associations to set up their own groups?
It was essential for us to involve the young ENT surgeons in the association life. Prof Nicolas Fakhry (from Marseille) has gathered very talented ENT doctors from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Lebanon, South Africa and USA. Their mission will be to contribute to educational material and resources, participate in humanitarian missions, and create and manage a Network IFOS – Young Physician Group (research, clinical, course, academic career, scholarship.)
Tell us about your humanitarian projects. How can IFOS members get involved?
We have several goals:
- to provide human and technical resources when necessary
- to coordinate more global action with multidisciplinary teams
- to represent ORL interest in diverse humanitarian international organisations
- to support the WHO engagement for prevention of deafness and hearing loss
Through the new IFOS website, an international advisory board, led by Prof Thierry Mom, will be able to receive the needs and requests from both volunteers willing to help colleagues in the field of otolaryngology – head and neck surgery, and from local teams wishing to be helped. In order to facilitate global actions, those requesting help and those willing to provide it can be put in touch, and assistance will be given as much as possible by IFOS.
All of us here at ENT & Audiology News feel that international collaboration is more important than ever. Do you think that other national ENT societies should be building similar bridges with IFOS?
Thanks to the Educational Material Committee, we are already involving national ENT societies in our global actions, such as The German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head & Neck Surgery or the Spanish Society of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery.
We also wish our initiative to be continued by the next IFOS organisers, The Canadian Society.
