Dear IFNE members, friends and colleagues,

Although many of us had hoped that the COVID-19 pandemic would be over in the second half of the year, it is still going on and even worse in many regions. Thus, it is pretty clear that no major meetings will take place this year all over the world. Therefore, our interim meeting has to be postponed to next year. Additionally, all our planned IFNE endoscopy courses had to be cancelled so far as well. Many academic institutions have restricted travel opportunities to foreign countries for their employees. Joachim Oertel is still optimistic to hold his “Neuroendoscopy Week” in Homburg, Germany. We hope for the best.

To fulfill our mission at least as good as possible under these circumstances, we have initiated a webinar series in collaboration with the Neuroendoscopy committee of the WFNS which is quite successful. So far, we had usually around 200 participants from all over the world in each webinar. Initially, the webinars were performed every other week. Now we will continue on a monthly basis. I invite all our members to participate in this activity.

Hopefully, we can meet in 2021 for our world congress in Singapore which will be a joint meeting with ISPN.  Our 2021 Congress Chairman, Sew Wan Tew, and our Scientific Committee Chairman, Luigi Cavallo, will put an interesting meeting together. I really look forward to seeing you all face-to-face as soon as possible.

I wish you and your families to stay safe.

Henry W. S. Schroeder
President, International Federation of NeuroEndoscopy
Greifswald, August 7, 2020