Dear ISBI Members and Friends,
ISBI continues to thrive thanks to your energy and active involvement. We have received over 700 abstracts for the 2026 ISBI Congress in Santiago, Chile. Dr. Ariel Miranda and the rest of the program committee have prepared a great program designed to promote active participation and interaction among delegates. Highlights of the program include among others the Presidential Plenary: “Burn Surgery is a Human Right,” 4 pre-congress workshops, reports from burn journals around the globe, and a whole day scar management workshop provided by OSCARE Belgium. Please visit the ISBI Website at worldburn.org to review the 2026 ISBI Congress Program. The submitted abstracts are currently being reviewed, and you should hear in 2-3 weeks if your submission has been accepted for the meeting. Please remember, if you are an ISBI member and are having trouble funding the trip to Santiago there are scholarship/financial assistance funds available. To apply for these funds, please visit worldburn.org/financial assistance. Please read the requirements carefully before applying.
As I have mentioned previously, we are an active society. Dr. Barclay Stewart’s Delphi process for burn prevention is well underway and just today Dr. Fiona Wood and the ISBI AI Research Study group just launched the Global Snapshot of Artificial Intelligence in Burn Care (GSAIBC). This should have arrived in your email today. Dr. Miranda’s Disaster work group is getting more active. With our partners, Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, COANIQUEM, Burn Healing Foundation, Interburns, Ahl Masr Foundation, Sunshine Welfare Foundation, and Interplast, we are participating in a process to map the burn resources in NGO/non-profits around the world - Global Civil Society Network on Burns.
For many years, ISBI has offered an interactive course entitled, "Caring for the Burn Survivor Beyond 48 Hours." This course is a full day seminar that covers topics around airway management, rehabilitation, nursing, nutrition, wound care / wound coverage, prevention and disaster management. If you are hosting a national or regional conference in a low or middle-income country and would like ISBI to offer this course as a pre-conference course, please reach out to ISBI at office@worldburn.org.
And as an update to the ISBI Burn Center Assessment Program, we are sending three teams this year to visit 12 burn centers in South Africa (x2), Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Egypt, India (x2), Vietnam and Indonesia. We also have some centers who applied that we could not get to this year that we hope to include in our 2027 visits. If your center has not applied but wants to be considered for a visit by the ISBI Burn Center Assessment Team in 2027, please apply online beginning in June 2026 https://worldburn.org/assessment_program.aspx.
The ISBI Executive Committee and Board of Directors just had our Annual Meeting a couple weeks ago. One important decision that came out of the meeting was the decision to add a non-physician member to the ISBI Executive Committee as an At-Large member with full voting rights. The Executive Committee felt this was the right direction for our Society given the multi-disciplinary nature of our Society and the energy and contribution of the nursing and rehabilitation committees. This will require bylaws change so watch for this vote over the next few months. During that meeting, we also accepted a proposal to hold the 2027 ISBI Regional Conference in Cairo, Egypt and a proposal to hold the 2028 ISBI Congress in Bangkok, Thailand. Look for the formal announcements of these meetings on the website soon. During the ISBI Annual Meeting, we heard from our editors and publishers of Burns and Burns Open. Both journals are seeing increased submissions which is a good sign of continued strength. One decision that we made which will go into effect in January 2027 is that ISBI will cease to offer a printed copy of BURNS. If you would like a printed version, our publisher, Elsevier, can supply it “on demand” for a small fee.
I invite you to join us in Santiago, Chile for the 2026 ISBI Congress and I ask you to visit the Congress page for information on how to register for the congress. The ISBI Office is available to assist you with any questions you may have regarding the 2026 Congress.
A lot of positive changes are happening in our society!
I hope to see you all in Santiago!
Thank you.
David Harrington, MD
ISBI President