Obstetric Anaesthesia Committee

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