Dear Visitors of the WFN website!
On behalf of the WFN I welcome you and invite you to the WFN website. The WFN website provides not only information on the WFN, but also adds news and is frequently updated. Within the website you have access to our WFN Newsletter, World Neurology, which is free and you are invited to download it and also able to subscribe. In addition we post regularly on social media, and we have added a WFN Service Page in our Journal of the Neurological Sciences (JNS) to update on the activities of the WFN and also include invited reviews and reports (see latest issue ⧉). In addition to the JNS, we also have the eNeurologicalSci (eNS) as our other official journal.
The yearly meeting of delegates—the Council of Delegates (COD)—will be held on the 25th of Sept. 2024 virtually. The WFN now has 124 members, and each member society has a delegate representing the member society. The present distribution of male/female delegates is 23% female and 76% male, which resembles the worldwide distribution of male to female parliamentarians (www.unwomen.org/.../leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures ⧉, www.ipu.org/.../new-ipu-report-more-women-in-parliament-and-more-countries-with-gender-parity ⧉). The future goal will be to aim at a 50:50 distribution.
The COD meeting will contain several reports. The audited reports which be distributed in advance and will be discussed and approved. Several committees will be asked to report on their activities in the past year. We will have one electronic election for an elected trustee. This newly elected trustee replaces Prof. Alla Guekht, who is now at the end of her second term. For this position, 6 candidates considered as appropriate have been selected by the nomination committee. Please see their statements in World Neurology and on the website.
The next site of the World Congress of Neurology (WCN 2025 ⧉) will be Seoul, South Korea, and for 2027 Cape Town has been elected. Following Cape town in 2027, the next site in 2029 will be in Europe. The first call will go out.
This year, the WFN for the first time introduces a virtual update meeting, WNU ⧉, which will cover the recent developments in the most frequent neurological diseases, and also include teaching courses. The meeting will be virtual and we hope to reach all parts of the world, in particular low-middle and low income countries. The lectures will also be presented as short communications in the eNS ⧉, which is an Open Access journal, to promote and prolong the impact. Other virtual education days will be the joint WFN-AFAN-IHS headache day (see EHHPA 2023), and we are planning the joint Asian WFN-AOAN educational days on movement disorders for 2025.
For 2025 the next WCN is planned for Seoul in South Korea, and presently the preparations are ongoing. Please note that we have reduced the duration of the congress by one day, and it will end on Wednesday. As in all previous WCNs, we strive to have an attractive scientific program with local flavour, and will also provide a series of teaching courses. We will also keep our neuropolitical activities, such as the regional meetings and we hope to be able to have guests also from the WHO. We will continue to promote interactive sessions such as debates and "coffee talks". The tradition of paper poster presentation will be maintained and we will be introducing more interactive aspects to enhance the program and faculty interactions. As before, we will apply for CME accreditation. Last but not least we will also provide an interesting social program. Please follow our congress proceedings on the website ⧉ and social media.
As in previous years, congress bursaries for young neurologists will be available. Awards will include the joint AAN/WFN Munsat Award on education, the Angela Vincent award, and the prestigious Elsevier awards.
Education and global neurology are the main activities of the WFN. For education, we are glad to report that for all WFN training centers we received many applications. (for Cairo: 9, for Mexico: 7, and for Rabat 4-year training: 18). The selection was very competitive, and we congratulate Aba Cisse from Mali, Cynthia Marleny Aliñado Ramos from Guatemala, and Prince Kazadi from Democratic Republic of Congo to their selection. I also want to thank the selection committees and Jade Levi for their responsible and thorough work.
We are proud to keep up the WFN Training Centers (TCs) since 2013 and have initiated the official site visits this year in Cairo, which will be followed by Dakar in July, and Rabat and Cape town in Autumn. The TCs have produced a number of successful participants which will be presented in the Alumni list. The intent is to support the training of neurologists in Africa and Meso- and Latin America, either as full training or a fellowship. For Cairo we acknowledge the support of the Association of British Neurologists (ABN), and for Rabat a constant additional trainee supported from the ICNMD ⧉. All other funds come from the WFN and we are very glad to be able to support this program.
The department visits program continues and we have several successful participants. Increasingly the travel restrictions, in particular visa applications, put an additional strain on the organization of these short term visits, for both the applicants as well as the inviting societies. We hope that these regulations, which are often still a post covid residual, will change for the better again.
Training, knowledge, and science is not enough, and neurological societies have the implicit duty to train younger colleagues also about advocacy and leadership. The WFN has continued the WCN Advocacy teaching courses in the biennial WCNs over years, which emphasized these important aspects on a smaller scale. In 2023 the AAN and the WFN started to co-develop a joint Global Advocacy and Leadership course (GALP), which will be initiated at the AAN meeting in San Diego in 2025 with an onsite intensive training course, followed by 5 virtual meetings discussing topics and meeting mentors, and ending in another in person meeting with graduation of the participants at the WCN in Seoul. The meeting is directed at low-middle and low income countries and 20 persons will be selected after a careful process to participate in this GALP course. All travel costs and the local costs will be included. Please look out for the GALP announcement from both the AAN and WFN.
The WFN has introduced an e-learning hub, serving not only the communication with other providers, but also keeping an archive of congresses, e-learning days, virtual meetings, and topics. This e learning hub has now been re-engineered and has received a new platform which will allow better access and easy use. Please use our e-learning hub as a source of information and education.
This year's World Brain Day (WBD) will be on Brain Health and Prevention. Both topics have a history: Brain health is a continuing topic, which has also been taken up worldwide by other societies and is in line with the WHO's efforts. The 5 pillars of the IGAP are: Advocacy, Therapy , Prevention, Innovation/Research, and Public health. From these 5 pillars we chose prevention as this year's topic, as prevention is a powerful and often underestimated tool we need to use to preserve brain health, and also increase the number of persons which are not affected by neurological diseases.
All scientific societies and subspecialties are encouraged to design and work on prevention, and the developments in stroke have shown what powerful instruments can be developed. Please follow us on our WBD, and even more importantly use our toolbox ⧉ to promote the WBD in your region. Please also download the WFN - WHO IGAP Toolkit information leaflet.
We hope that despite all worldwide violence and often incomprehensible developments, the spirit of neurology will unite us in improving the care for patients with neurological disorders, therapies and treatment, as well as rehabilitation. We also need to include patients ("persons with lived experience"), carers and the public more into our considerations.
"The World does not Stop" (*), and we have to increase our efforts in education and advocacy worldwide and our common goal is to have access and equity for neurology worldwide.
(*) Key quote at the JNS Gala Dinner in Tokyo, May 2024 , by Wolfgang Grisold.
Humanitarian Assistance for Migrants, Refugees and Victims of Conflict LinksThe WFN encourages support to migrants, including refugees, stateless persons and victims of conflict worldwide. As a charity, we are primarily concerned with people with neurological disorders, their access to care and the provision of essential drugs. The following organisations work globally in crisis situations, and we encourage donations to them: |
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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR ⧉ |
United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund UNICEF ⧉ |
International Committee of The Red Cross ICRC ⧉ |
The mission of the WFN is to foster quality neurology and brain health worldwide, a goal we seek to achieve by promoting global neurological education and training, with the emphasis placed firmly on under-resourced parts of the world.