The handing over of the WUWHS baton

When Gulnaz Tariq's World Union of Wound Healing Societies' (WUWHS) presidential term began, it was faced with the challenges and uncertainties that only the ‘once-in-a-lifetime 2020’ could have brought with it. The better term would be ‘utter unpredictability’, as everything that was previously established as routine and accepted as such, was turned upside down and the 2020 WUWHS Congress had to be postponed due to travel bans and global restrictions. At the time the WUWHS Congress was supposed to be held, in Abu Dhabi, Gulnaz was instead setting up hotels as quarantine centres and commissioning a field hospital as a COVID-19 care centre instead. A world wound care congress was the last thing on anyone's mind.

It took two years to return to a near state of normal. The holding of the 2022 WUWHS Congress in March of that year was thanks to a resilient WUWHS executive board, to the previous leaders who served as interim office bearers to help WUWHS through the pandemic, and a scientific committee that had to redraft the conference programme numerous times, due to speakers still being in lockdown in their respective countries. Not once were tempers lost, nor were towels thrown in. Everybody just went back to the drawing board to make yet another workable plan that needed to come to fruition. When the Congress was finally held, despite PCR testing every five days still being mandatory, the floor was buzzing with people only too glad to be allowed to travel and to experience social interaction again—albeit masked. It felt like a family reunion and the relief was palpable. Those who could not travel attended online, but all were in one mind—that it was a far cry from being present in person.