Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is a pleasure to write to you all after taking over as the Chairperson of the AICC RCOG south zone. As fellows and members of the college, we are proud to belong to the large international community of the RCOG. The AICC RCOG is the large umbrella that brings us all together. Given the expanse of India and the large number of members and fellows here, while, AIC RCOG has the four zones within it to encourage more interaction and activity both amongst ourselves and with the college.

Since 2003, I have been involved with activities of the AICC RCOGSZ, in varying capacities. I know we are an enthusiastic, motivated and committed group and have across the four states, been involved in quite a few academic activities such as conferences, workshops and teaching programs. I would like for us to join our strengths and work together in a few focused areas over the next few years.

I am very happy to say that AICC RCOG SZ will be working on some programs and meeting with ICOG over the next three years. This promises to be a meaningful collaboration and I will update you on the developments soon. Our website aiccrcogsz.com has been updated and we are working to add to the content on that site for trainees and public as well. The website will be a good way to keep in touch with all the activities and news.

The broad themes I have in mind for activities this year are: a focus on reducing maternal morbidity, improving quality of obstetric care delivery and establishing collaborative groups that could help generate good quality data in focused areas. Towards this end, we would like to initiate a voluntary near miss audit in the institutions and practices that are willing to do so. Dr V P Paily has kindly agreed to help initiate and guide this process. The India liaison group from the UK has also offered to help this process. I hope that once a few units start this will spread to include more hospitals. Those of you who would like to put in place such an anonymized near miss audit kindly send in a mail of interest to info@aiccrcogsz.com and we will get in touch with you.

We are also planning on workshops that will be developed as a module that can be taken into the smaller cities and towns. One stream of these workshops will be along with and for midwifes and labour ward nurses. We aim to develop these modules and have some train the trainer sessions so that a larger group of us are involved in the delivery of these modules. Again, I request those interested to log in your interest on the website aiccrcogsz.com

The traveling fellowship is something that we are very happy to offer the younger members of our zone and i would request you to check the details on the website and apply for the same. I am thankful to all the institutions and their heads for spontaneously supporting this travelling fellowship for the past 4 years.

The committee members of the SZ are easily accessible to all of you. I look forward to hearing from you and interacting with you on the different programs planned.

- Dr. Uma Ram