Download the latest Obstetric Anaesthesia Committee Report

Members of the Obstetric Anaesthesia Committee

Obstetric Committee Report 2009

Committee Members:

• Howell, Dr. Paul (United Kingdom) Chairman
• Abdoulaye, Dr Diallo – Mali
• Badran, Dr Izdiad – Jordan
• Cruz, Dr Maria Conception – Phillippines
• Garza Hinojosa, Dr Anselmo – Mexico
• Kuczkowski, Dr Krzystof – United States
• Owen, Dr Medge – USA
• Saud, Dr Salwa al – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
• Terui, Dr Katsuo – Japan

• Liaison Officer to Executive Committee:
• Cattaneo, Dr Alfredo (Argentina)

A change of guard, but still looking to improve the lot of pregnant
women everywhere! At the World Congress in 2008 a new committee
chairman, Dr Paul Howell from London, was appointed. The remit remains
the same; to provide support, training and education for anaesthetic
practitioners (both medical and non-medical) who care for pregnant women
across the world, with particular focus on resource-poor countries, and
Paul Howell builds on the exemplary work already established by Dr
Maria Cristina Celesia, who has led the Obstetric Anaesthesia Committee
for the past four years.      

In an attempt to build mutually beneficial relations with our obstetric
colleagues, and initiate discussions about possible joint projects in
the future, the Committee Chairman and WFSA Honorary Secretary (Dr David
Wilkinson) met with Professor Hamid Rushwan, CEO of FIGO, the
International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and Bryan Thomas,
their Administrative Director, in London in March. A very useful
discussion took place and Paul Howell has been invited to speak at the
FIGO World Congress in South Africa in October. He will contribute to a
round-table panel discussion in a plenary session devoted to the FIGO
initiative on Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH) supported by the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. FIGO Have recently been granted $10m by
the Gates Foundation for their MNH initiative, and we hope to explore
ways of collaborating with them on projects of mutual interest.
Hopefully, further useful contacts may be made through attendance at the
FIGO Congress.

Links with the Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association (OAA) and
Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI)
continue to grow, and the WFSA is joining forces with them on a number
of projects currently in development. A new handbook of obstetric
anaesthesia specifically targeted at resource-poor countries is being
written, edited by Paul Clyburn and Rachel Collis from the UK,  and will
be jointly funded and distributed by the WFSA, AAGBI and OAA. Initially
it will be produced in hardcopy paper form, but it is hoped that this
may later become available in electronic format as well

The WFSA is collaborating with the OAA and Elsevier, publishers of the
International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia (IJOA), to create an
obstetric anaesthesia resource disc for distribution to anaesthetic
practitioners in resource-poor countries. This CD-ROM will contain back
copies of IJOA, a pod-cast version of the OAA Three Day Course in
Obstetric Anaesthesia and Analgesia, and translations of patient
information leaflets, and will be distributed principally through
existing WFSA links.

The WFSA is also applying to joint the World Health Organisation
Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, a multidisciplinary
alliance of interested parties who are working to improve the health of
mothers and children worldwide. Joining the Partnership will hopefully
improve our international profile and our ability to liaise with
like-minded organisations in our quest to fulfil common goals.

Individual members of the Obstetric Anaesthesia Committee continue to
make significant contributions to the practice of obstetric anaesthesia
and analgesia in their own regions, and beyond. Most notable, perhaps,
is Medge Owen, whose organisation Kybele has gone from strength to
strength, and has established on-going support programs in several
countries, and demonstrated their impact through peer-reviewed
publications.

It is hoped that in years to come there will be useful collaboration
between individual members of the Obstetric Anaesthesia Committee, which
is now looking to develop broad-based, long-term projects to improve
the provision of obstetric anaesthetic care worldwide.

Paul Howell,  London