Division Director: Dr Ivonne Diaz

During the FIGO Regional Congress – Cartagena 2022, the Division of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Wellbeing put out the Cartagena Declaration.  

As explained by the Division Director Dr Ivonne Diaz:  

For our division, this Regional Congress in Cartagena was very important. We were able to create the Cartagena Declaration. The Cartagena Declaration is based on the declaration that was made with the Latin American Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics Societies in Panama during the Congress of Contraception in August 2022, in order to realise and protect the sexual and reproductive rights of women in Latin America. Based on this document, we wanted to gather the ideas and make our own declaration. It is called the Cartagena Declaration for the five continents, so that each country, in each of the continents, should protect the reproductive rights of women, not only in the areas of contraception and safe abortion, but also in the possibility of access without barriers to adequate reproductive health throughout their lives.

Committee on Contraception 

Committee Chair: Dr Aparna Sridhar 

The FIGO Committee on Contraception has been particularly busy in 2022, notably with the creation of FIGO’s first ever podcast.  

Committee Chair Dr Aparna Sridhar said,

Our first and very exciting project has been the creation of digital podcasts, and these are the FIGO's first ever podcasts, on the topic of adolescent contraception. The next thing we did is to collaborate with the Safe Abortion Committee, and we gave a webinar on post-abortion contraception. It was received really well and was well-attended by people across the globe. And we also involved the World Association of Trainees in Obstetrics and Gynecology (WATOG) - we launched an essay contest to understand the young minds perspective on contraception, and that was well received as well.

Committee on Safe Abortion 

Committee Chair: Dr Teresa Bombas 

In 2022, the Committee on Safe Abortion took part in several webinars and put out a number of FIGO Statements as part of the committee’s activities.  

Committee Chair Dr Teresa Bombas said,

This year we have collaborated in a few statements with FIGO. These were global international statements to promote safe abortion. We have been present in three webinars. One of them is a WHO webinar, with a focus on Africa, and our colleague from Mozambique was there representing the committee and talking about how important decriminalisation of safe abortion is. The second webinar was a webinar from FLASOG and Dr Laura Gil (the vice chair) was present in this webinar about reproductive rights in Latin America. The third one was a webinar from the division and it was a webinar shared between the contraception and the abortion committees.

Committee on Reproductive Medicine, Endocrinology and Infertility (REI) 

Chair: Dr Jaideep Malhotra 

This committee focused a big part of the year on masterclasses touching on PCOS and endometriosis. The committee also launched its global fertility education partnership. 

Dr Jaideep Malhotra, Committee Chair, highlighted, 

This year, we started with the very innovative idea of the masterclasses where evidence-based practices reach out to the developing world. These masterclasses are on the two basic diseases which affect fertility in a big way: endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. Again, the consequences of these diseases in pregnancy, where the long-term issues come on how pregnancies have to be managed, understanding the less understood hyperglycemia, eclampsia, hypertension, diabetes. These masterclasses which have reached out to a lot of people and have been very well received.