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The Middle East and North African Chapter (IFSO-MENAC)
Khaled Gawdat
Growth, Leadership, and Regional Impact of the IFSO MENA Chapter
The Middle East and North African (MENA) region is a geographic bridge between Africa and Asia
that, while not a single geographic entity, shares a unified cultural identity through similar languages,
religions, and traditions. The International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity Middle East and
North African Chapter (IFSO-MENAC) is the youngest chapter in IFSO, founded in 2017, and
currently includes 12 member countries. Although geographically part of the broader region, Israel,
South Africa, and Turkey remain members of the European Chapter.
Origins and Precursor Societies (1999-2016)
The foundational idea for a regional chapter began in 1999 when the Egyptian Society for Bariatric
Surgery (ESBS), led by metabolic bariatric surgery (MBS) pioneer Professor Khaled Gawdat, and the
Kuwaiti Society for Bariatric Surgery, led by then-Minister of Health Dr. Mohammad AlJarallah, joined
IFSO as national societies. Because many countries in the region lacked surgery societies beyond
the scope of general surgery, they were unable to join IFSO directly. To resolve this, the Egyptian and
Kuwaiti societies applied to create a Pan Arab society affiliated with IFSO, ensuring that practitioners
of MBS across the entire region could unite under one umbrella.
The IFSO Executive Board and General Council approved these applications. Over the following
years, as IFSO expanded globally, other nations in the region joined, including the United Arab
Emirates (2008), Saudi Arabia (2009), Lebanon (2012), Jordan (2015), and Iraq (2019). Initially, these
countries joined the IFSO-APC or IFSO-EC until a dedicated regional framework could be
established.
Working toward united representation, two distinct precursor societies were formed: (1) the Gulf
Obesity Surgery Society (GOSS): Formed during a 2012 meeting in Dubai, GOSS included the Gulf
countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman), with Mohammad
AlJarallah serving as its first president. Their inaugural conference was held in Kuwait in 2013. And,
(2) the Pan Arab Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (PASMBS): Formed in 2015 for the
remaining MENA countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Libya), with Khaled Gawdat serving as
its first president. PASMBS held its first conference in Cairo in 2016.
Establishment and Early Leadership (2016-2018)
In a landmark meeting in November, 2016, in Cairo, held during the ESBS meeting, GOSS and
PASMBS agreed to join forces to apply for the IFSO-MENA Chapter. The IFSO General Council
formally approved the application in 2017. Initially formed by six countries—Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates, and Saudi Arabia from GOSS; and Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan from PASMBS—the chapter
later expanded to include Libya, Iraq, Tunisia, Bahrain, Oman, and Pakistan. Formal elections to
appoint the Executive Board and Officers of the MENAC were held in Dubai in December 2017.
From April 12-13, 2019, the 1st IFSO-MENAC meeting was held in Kuwait City, Kuwait (Salman Al
Sabah, President); October 30-31, 2020, the 2nd meeting was convened as a virtual congress due to
COVID-19 (Waleed Bukhari, President); the 3rd meeting, May 11-14, 2022, was held in Al Khobar,
Saudi Arabia (Prof. Mirza Gari, President); and the 4th, December 12-14, 2024, in Cairo, Egypt
(Khaled Gawdat, President).
06 - Aniceto Baltasar 2002-2003 Spain
Professor Baltasar has been a leader and innovator in MBS in
Spain and in Latin America, where he performed the first
laparoscopic gastric bypass. In 2000, in Europe, he performed the
first laparoscopic duodenal switch, and in 2002, the first
laparoscopic sleeve. Baltasar was instrumental in the farsighted
guidance of several surgical societies. He founded the Spanish
Bariatric Society (SECO) in 1997, and became its Honorary
President in 2002. During his IFSO Presidency, Baltasar worked to
bridge the gap between Spanish and Latin American surgical
societies, deepening the international connection between the
two Spanish-speaking regions and enriching the international
character of IFSO. Baltasar also helped to standardize
international surgical curricula and the criteria for safe execution
of procedures, particularly that of the duodenal switch. Beyond his
presidential term, Baltasar provided leadership again from
2000-2011 as Associate Editor for Obesity Surgery, furthering its
academic rigor in peer-reviewed reporting standards.
07 - Henry Buchwald 2003-2004 USA
Professor Buchwald’s career has passed the 60-year mark and is
going strong. After serving in the U.S. Air Force as a Flight
Surgeon, he completed his medical training at the University of
Minnesota, remaining there through his career as a practicing
surgeon-scientist, research innovator, teacher and biomedical
inventor. Buchwald has been referred to as an academic giant: A
prolific writer (over 300 publications), Buchwald is credited with
creating the term “metabolic surgery,” and has been called the
Father of Metabolic Surgery. Among his research works, a primary
advance in medicine and surgery is the Program on the Surgical
Control of the Hyperlipidemias (POSCH) trial. The National
Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded him the largest
investigator-initiated grant to date (>$60 million); Buchwald and
associates published multiple early outcomes; the 17-year results
were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and
presented at the annual meeting of the American College of
Surgeons. The POSCH trial conclusively demonstrated that a distal
intestinal bypass could lower cholesterol, resulting in a reduction
of cardiac events and improvement in life expectancy.
As one of very few past presidents of both ASMBS and IFSO, as
well as past Co-Editor-in-Chief of Obesity Surgery, Buchwald
worked to leverage his global platform to transform how the
medical community viewed “weight-loss surgery,” and to clarify

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