IFOS/ICO International Fellowship:

Report of the Fellowship Director, July 2003

On this page:

• Historical timeline for the Fellowship
  
  
• The aim of the Fellowship
  
  
• Fellowships awarded through March 2003
  
  
• Expenses for Fellowships from 2001 to 2003
  
  
• Departments offering places for IFOS/ICO-Fellows
  
  
• Where the Fellows came from and went
  
  
• Training Places Summary
  
  
• The Fellowship committee and decision making
  
  
• The Future
  
  
• For more information
  
  
• Recipients of the IFOS/ICO Fellowship

Balder P. Gloor, MD, Treasurer IFOS/ICO, Zurich, July 2003

Historical timeline for the Fellowship

2000 Jerusalem	Fellowship proposed, Committee for "Policies" formed
2001 July Buenos Aires	Policies accepted CHF 200 000. plus funds for education to start with Search for Hosts, Edition of "Policies" and Directory (April 2003: 43 hosts)
2003 New Delhi	CHF 200 000.- for 2003 and CHF 200 000.- for 2004 assigned to the fellowship program

end of 2001	12 fellowships awarded 3 paid by Novartis 3 paid by Fund for Development Univ of Erlangen 6 paid by IFOS/ICO
end of 2002	15 fellowships awarded paid by IFOS and funds given to IFOS
2002 September term	20 fellowships awarded most of the fellows will be trained in 2003
2003 March term	19 fellowships awarded, 13 declined, 2 postponed
Total	66 fellows awarded through July 2003

Table 2: Expenses for Fellowships from 2001 to 2003

	CHF	US $
2001	43 721.50	25 828.00
2002	127 651.25	81 705.00
2003 Fall application 2002	150 000.00 (ca)	100 000.00 (ca)
2003 Spring application	150 000.00 (ca)	100 000.00 (ca)
Total	471 372.75	307 533.00

Departments offering places for IFOS/ICO-Fellows

46 Departments of Ophthalmology all over the world agreed to train fellows following the Policies of IFOS/ICO (Tab. 3)

Table 3: Departments offering Fellowship

Arab – Africa	4
Asia	6
Australia	2
North and South America	6
Europe	28

Where the Fellows Came from and Went (Table 4)

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN OF THE FELLOWS		WHERE THE FELLOWS WERE TRAINED
Armenia	1	Italy	1
Bangladesh	1	Singapore	1
Brasil	1	Portugal	1
Bulgaria	3	Germany	3
P. R. China	6	Germany	3
		Poland	1
		Singapore	1
		USA	1
Congo	1	Germany	1
Egypt	2	France	1
		Germany	1
Ethiopia	1	Canada	1
Georgia	1	Germany	1
India	19	Belgium	5
		Canada	1
		France	3
		Germany	6
		USA	4
Indonesia	1	Japan	1
Iran	2	the Netherlands	1
		France	1
Jordan	2	Germany	1
		USA	1
Kyrgyz	1	USA	1
Nigeria/Ethiopia	1	Germany	1
Nigeria	4	India	3
		the Netherlands	1
Pakistan	3	Germany	2
		UK	1
Palestine	1	Jordan	1
Philippines	2	Finland	1
		Singapore	1
Poland	2	Germany	1
		India	1
Romania	2	Belgium	1
		the Netherlands	1
Syria	2	France	2
Tunisia	1	Germany	1
Turkey	1	Japan	1
Ukraine	1	Germany	1
Venezuela	1	France	1
Vietnam	1	Germany	1
Yugoslavia	2	Belgium	1
		France	1
Total	66	Total	66

Training Places Summary

Belgium	7
Canada	2
Finland	1
France	9
Germany	23
India	4
Italy	1
Japan	2
Jordan	1
the Netherlands	4
Poland	1
Portugal	1
Singapore	3
USA	7
UK	1
Total	66

Special thanks goes to all staff members of the hosting departments. The additional workload taken over by staff members is considerable.

Many Departments were and are supporting fellows by offering inexpensive housing and food.

Leading in taking fellows are J.-J. DeLaey in Ghent, Belgium, Gottfried Naumann in Erlangen, Prof. A. Kampik and his staff in Munich and Prof. Pfeiffer in Mainz, Germany.

It is important that the goals, which are attempted to reach in such a short period as three months really are, are formulated precisely and restrictively in agreement between fellow and host. Language problems could be overcome. Cultural differences turned into positive experiences.

For several fellows and host institutions the three months fellowship became the basis for future collaboration between departments and hospitals, surmounting frontiers of nations and continents.

The Fellowship committee and decision making

For decision making, a three person ( 1, 2, 3 ) approach was adopted at the ICO Meeting in New Delhi January 2003.

1. the fellowship-"Program-Director" (B. Gloor, Zurich)

2. the local expert (e.g., Africa: D.Etya’ale, A. Abiose, H. Faal, V.Klauss, India: Pran Nagpal. Nag Rao; Arab-Africa: Al Maghraby, J.-P.Adénis, East Europe: Zb. Zagorskyi; North America: Paul Lichter, Al Sommer …,South America: R. Belfort, F. Contreras. A.Rodriguez, Juan Verdaguer etc…)

3. an additional expert: J.-J. Delay, Ghent

The individual responsible for the fellowship (1) works up the applications (forms for evaluation, tables etc), submits to the "local" ICO-, ACICO- members and other experts (2); they give advice.

The individual responsible (1) hands the collected documents to the 3rd expert (3).

The expert (3) and the "Fellowship responsible" (1) meet, discuss the application, make a ranking and make the final decision.

The Future

The International Congress in Sidney was a tremendous success, not only scientifically but also financially. We owe to our Australian colleagues great thanks.

They made it possible to continue with the fellowship program this and the next year.

But for the future much more funds and much more help for fund raising is mandatory!

The special needs of Africa and other regions hit by an enormous lack of trained ophthalmologists should come more and more into focus. The shortcomings in these regions call for a second type of Fellowship: Funds for the whole residency period are necessary ($ 10 000.00 to 12 000.00 / year, resp. $ 30 000.00 to 36 000.- for three years of residency) to overcome the tremendous lack of ophthalmologists in some regions and countries.

The ICOFoundation is asked to give high priority to the Fellowship project!

For more information

Information on the Fellowship project may be downloaded at www.icoph.org/fellow or requested from:

Zurich, July 19, 2003

Next: Recipients of Fellowships

Also see: Directory of Fellowships 1: Alphabetically by Country