Report of the Medal of Honor Committee

The function of this Ad Hoc committee of the WFNS is to select surgeons with outstanding achievements in the field of neurological surgery both scientifically and professionally to receive the Medal of Honor at the WFNS Interim Meeting and World Congress. As routine in the past years, the Committee members select 5 awardees and the President of the WFNS recommends one more in a 4-year administration term. Three recipients will be awarded at the Interim Meeting and the other three will be awarded at the World Congress.

According to the WFNS Bylaws, this Committee should be chaired by the Pastpresident of the WFNS and the Committee composed of five Honor Presidents as the committee members. For the term 2017-2021, Yong-Kwang Tu is the Chair of the Committee and the committee members consists of Roberto Heros (AANS), Francesco Tomasello (EANS), Takashi Kawase (AASNS), Leonidas Quintana (FLANC) and Abdeslam Khamlichi (CAANS).

In 2019, a list of 10 candidates was recommended by WFNS second Vice-presidents and leaders of the continental societies are to select 3 recipients of this award at the Beijing Interim Meeting. The final results from a confidential voting by the committee members revealed that Dr. Yoko Kato obtained the most votes and other three colleagues, Dr. Evandro de Oliveira, Dr. Concezio Di Rocco and Dr. James Rutka had tied votes as the second place. Therefore, according to their seniority in age, the committee members decided to award Dr. de Oliveira and Dr. De Rocco, together with Dr. Yoko, the Medal of Honor at the 2019 Beijing Interim Meeting. Dr. Rutka, along with Dr. Ahmet Ammar, as recommended by the WFNS President, Dr. Franco Servadei's, will be awarded the Medal of Honor at the Bogota World Congress in 2021.

Currently, the Committee is seeking recommendation of candidates for this award from leaders of continental societies once again. Similar to prior years, upon receiving all of the recommendation letters, the Committee will select the awardees through a confidential voting process. According to the WFNS Bylaws, up to four Medals of Honor may be conferred at a World Congress. Therefore, we plan to select an additional one or two more awardees from the recommendation list to be awarded, together with Dr. Rutka and Dr. Ammar at the next World Congress in Bogota.