Greetings to the Fellows of the AFN.

First, let me greet everyone a Happy New Year! I hope the new decade of the 2020’s will give each one of us greater success in our personal and professional lives, and continuous success for the AFN.

This year 2020 will be a year of strengthening our practice of neurosurgery, institutions within the AFN, and the neurosurgical training programs. Hopefully we can achieve these by:

• Being members of other related societies like the Stroke Society of the Philippines and the Philippine Spine Society, which will not only lead to our individual professional advancement but will also enable the AFN to play important and pivotal roles in the formulation of policies for each society.
• Strengthening the AFN Committees by increasing involvement of non Board of Director Fellows in each committee. Each Committee has at least one member of the AFN BOD as Committee Head who may invite other Fellows to the Committee. Please accept the invitation to be a member of a particular committee when requested to join.
• Encouraging Neurosurgical training institutions to establish linkages with DOH hospitals, if needed. The AFN BOD will be happy to assist or broker linkages between our training programs and DOH hospitals if needed, to strengthen residency training programs.
• Studying and possibly establishing PhilHealth Z-packages for neurosurgical procedures. The specialty of Neurosurgery does not have Z-packages and with the looming Universal Health Care program of the government, having Z-package rates will benefit not only our patients but by our practices as well.

The above-mentioned goals for 2020 would of course complement the usual Scientific and professional development activities of the AFN. We would also welcome suggested activities from the rest of the AFN Fellows.

I hope with these activities the AFN will carry on its tradition of success, for the year 2020.

All the best for each of us Fellows of the AFN!