The International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery: our mission under challenge.

The past 2 years have been two of the most memorable of my life. It was a humbling experience to be elected President-Elect at our Taipei meeting in 2006 and to then receive the poncho in 2007. And, it was a joyous experience to work with what has to have been one of the most talented and industrious executives in the history of the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery (ISPN). These are memories I will always cherish. I thank you for the honor of letting me work for an organization that is so good and that I care so much about. In 1972, 11 neurosurgeons assembled in Chicago and agreed to form the ISPN. The energy for this stemmed from a belief that in order to insure a rapid evolution of our specialty, a sharing of the collective knowledge was mandatory. This type of communication has always been at the core of the ISPN′s activities, and in 2000, our then president Hal Rekate led us in putting this mission on paper (Fig. 1). Our mission is the promotion of health in our young patients. We are no different than other specialties caring for children. We are passionate to further our specialty, and the energy for this comes from our love of children and our desire to serve them well. We take time away from our families to study, we spend our money to travel to learn new techniques, and we sacrifice our time to educate others. To accomplish these tasks, we have traditionally used our printed journals, annual scientific meeting, and educational courses held around the world. These tools were developed in response to the realities of the mid-twentieth century and have been very successful in driving the expansion of our specialty. The ISPN welcomes new members every year, and the attendance at our annual meeting continues to grow. The number and sophistication of the presentations at our annual meeting continues to expand. We are challenged by people such as Archbishop Tutu and the needs of emerging societies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas to support the development of pediatric neurosurgery in their communities. We need to congratulate ourselves on the great strides we have taken toward meeting our mission. But, before we do, before we sit back and reflect on our accomplishments, we had better take a good hard look at what is happening in our world. I do not need to tell you that it is rapidly changing. Therefore, I feel that it is timely for the ISPN to reflect on our mission and how we can support the needs of societies where our specialty is not fully developed. When we look at our world, we are seeing a rapid equilibration in access to information. This has been due to the emerging world′s rising capacity for wealth generation (Fig. 2) [1]. While for the past 400 to 500 years, a small handful of countries with relatively small populations dominated the world economy and controlled access to much information, this is rapidly changing as nations with massive populations experience staggering rates in the growth in their economies. India and China, the prime examples of these phenomena, have liberated much of their economies, and they now function in a largely free-market environment. The result is a freer access to information and the generation of wealth. The key here is the freeing of their economies from state control, and this lesson is being learned in other emerging countries such as Brazil and Childs Nerv Syst (2009) 25:1157–1161 DOI 10.1007/s00381-009-0929-0