20th March 2020
Dear Friends and colleagues
I write to you as the Chair of the 19th WCPAG which happened in Melbourne. Before the world turned upside down.
I have moments of relief when I realise how lucky we were to have organised the congress and had it, before the current world situation.
And I have moments of joy, when I reflect and remember the pleasures we all had in meeting together, sharing the program of lectures, social events, and of simply catching up with friends- with a hug and handshakes – and all those things we cannot currently do.
And I obviously have many moments of sadness as I realise that conferences, meetings and travel have all stopped and that so many are lives are now under threat.
The feedback from the vast majority of people was that they found the Congress stimulating, enjoyable, fun. That is a credit to the hard working team who put the Congress together and to our volunteers who added to making this a special occasion.
We had hoped that we would be able to teleconference the congress to people who could not attend – but we failed to achieve this. I am sorry. We were very conscious of the challenges of the cost for people to attend the congress, and had hoped to offer the online, teleconferencing opportunity. The current world situation has highlighted the need to reconsider this for next congresses, as everyones economic situation is likely to be difficult for some time to come.
And now that everyone is listening to the science of epidemics, maybe we can hope that everyone will listen to the science of climate change – as this too should force us to change how we meet and how we share knowledge.
We always planned that all the abstracts and all the lecture notes would be available to everyone around the world with an interest in PAG. Now, with the world in the middle of these very challenging times, this does not seem so important.
Life will go on and in 6 months time, we will all be trying to pick up the bits. We will need to look after each other, re-start the process of building bridges, teaching the trainees, supporting each other. Maybe then we can use some of the WCPAG lecture notes and read the abstracts that are now available on the FIGIJ website under WCPAG.
In the meantime – please take care of yourselves, your families, your colleagues. I hope you – my friends and colleagues, please stay well and I hope you will go without losing family, friends and colleagues, but it does seem likely that we will all suffer losses.
I will look forward to a time when I can give many of you a warm hug, with the joy of seeing you again – but even a skype/ zoom conversation in the meantime will always be wonderful.
In the meantime, our colleague Symphorosa, (who has been in the frontline in HongKong since January), has adapted the congress logo, and given a lecture on her experiences of managing COVID19. She has given permission for this to be shared on the FIGIJ website – for those of you who are still preparing for the COVID19 battle.
Take care my friends.
With love and best wishes
Sonia Grover
Chair of WCPAG organising committee
Immediate Past President of FIGIJ.
Translation of Sonia‘s letter-final
各位朋友、各位同事:
我以第十九届全球小儿青少年妇科会议主席身份给各位写信，这场盛会在墨尔本举办，那时世界还没有发生翻天覆地的变化。
我意识到我们是多么幸运，能够在当前世界形势发生巨变之前组织并举办这次大会时，真的松了一口气。
我也有快乐的时刻，当我回想和回忆我们所有人在一起聚会、分享课程、聚会、和朋友聊天时的快乐,我们一起拥抱，一起握手等等，以及所有那些我们现在做不到的事情。
当我意识到大会、普通会议和旅行都已停止，那么多人的生命正受到威胁时，这是多么令人悲伤的事情。
很开心对于本次会议，绝大多参会人员的反馈是，他们觉得大会激动人心的而且非常有趣。这要归功于组织大会的辛勤工作的团队，还要归功于我们的志愿者，他们使大会成为别具一格的聚会。
我们曾希望我们能够给不能参加的人进行电话会议，但我们目前尚未实现这一目标，对此我深感惋惜。我们非常清楚参加大会的成本给大家所带来的经济压力，并希望提供在线电话会议的机会。当前的世界形势突变，使得在下届大会上必须重新考虑这一问题，因为每个人的经济状况在未来一段时间内都可能很困难。
现在每个人都在关注流行病的相关科学知识，也许我们可以希望每个人都能关注气候变化的议題——因为这也应该迫使我们改变如何见面和分享知识的方式。
我们一直计划将所有的摘要和课堂笔记提供给世界上对PAG感兴趣的每个人。现在，世界正处于这个充满挑战的时代，这似乎不那么重要了。
生活还会继续，再过6个月，我们都会努力收拾残局。我们需要互相照顾，重新开始搭建桥梁、教导学员、互相支持的过程。也许屆時我们可以重溫一些WCPAG的课堂笔记，大家可以在FIGIJ网站上找到“WCPAG”的摘要。
與此同时，请照顾好你自己，你的家人，你的同事。我希望你——我的朋友和同事们——能保持健康，我希望你能在没有失去家人、朋友或同事的情况下走下去，但似乎我们都有可能遭受损失。
我期待着有一天我可以给你们很多人一个温暖的拥抱，带着再次见到你们的喜悦——但在此期间，即使是一次Skype/Zoom对话也将是非常美妙的。
我们的同事Symphorosa陳丞智教授(她自1月份以来一直在香港抗疫前线工作)，对大会的标志进行了修改，并讲述了她管理COVID19的经验。她已经允许FIGIJ在网站上分享这些信息——献给那些还在为COVID19战斗做准备的同道们。
保重，我的朋友们。
献上我的爱与祝福，
Sonia Grover
WCPAG组委会主席
FIGIJ的前任主席