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Congress Presidents

The following table represents the progression of IFSO World Congress Presidents, distinct from the
IFSO organizational presidents; these individuals served to organize and conduct the major annual
global meetings.

IFSO World Congress Presidents, 1996–2026

Year No. of Participants Location Congress President(s)

1996 375 Prague, Czech Republic Martin Fried
1997 400 Cancún, Mexico Rafael Alvarez Cordero
1998 400 Bruges, Belgium Mitiku Belachew; Jan Willem Greve
1999 450 Salzburg, Austria Emanuel Hell; Karl Miller
2000 500 Genoa, Italy Nicola Scopinaro
2001 550 Chania, Crete, Greece John Melissas
2002 500 São Paulo, Brazil Arthur Garrido Jr
2003 850 Salamanca, Spain Aniceto Baltasar
2004 350 Tokyo, Japan Isao Kawamura
2005 1,000 Maastricht, Netherlands Jan Willem Greve
2006 550 Sydney, Australia Paul O’Brien, Harry Frydenberg, John Dixon
2007 1,515 Porto, Portugal Antonio Sergio Porto
2008 1,400 Buenos Aires, Argentina Carlos Casalnuovo
2009 1,570 Paris, France Jean-Marc Chevallier
2010 903 Long Beach, United States Mal Fobi
2011 2,466 Hamburg, Germany Rudolf Weiner
2012 1,400 New Delhi, India Pradeep Chowbey
2013 1,720 Istanbul, Turkey Mustafa Taskin
2014 1,988 Montreal, Canada Michel Gagner
2015 1,594 Vienna, Austria Karl Miller
2016 2,879 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Ricardo Cohen
2017 2,758 London, United Kingdom Richard Welbourn
2018 2,469 Dubai, United Arab Emirates Ali Khammas
2019 3,256 Madrid, Spain Antonio Torres
2020–2021 — — No in-person World Congress (COVID-19 pandemic)
2022 1,169 Miami, United States Natan Zundel
2023 3,454 Naples, Italy Luigi Angrisani
2024 1,763 Melbourne, Australia Harry Frydenberg, Ahmad Aly
2025 2,450 Santiago, Chile Camilo Boza
2026 — Toronto, Canada Mehran Anvari

Data for 1996–2006 from: Greve JWM. Presidential report 2006: the future of the
the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity (IFSO). Obes Surg. 2006;16:1407-1411.
Data for 2007–2025 from official IFSO records, courtesy of Manuela Mazzarella, IFSO Chief
Operating Officer.

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