The evolving health crisis caused by COVID-19 has threatened the viability of our 44th Annual Scientific Meeting of our Division that was be held at the Brisbane Convention Centre, Brisbane, Australia from 29th May – 31st May, 2020.

The Board of the Australasian Division of the International Academy of Pathology (IAP) met by teleconference today, 17 March 2020, and has made the difficult decision to cancel our 2020 meeting. In deciding to take this action we were influenced by the concerns expressed by our membership, the cancellation of other medical meetings in Australasia, and decisions of many health care services around the world to restrict the travel of their workforces. The chief medical officer of Australia Brendan Murphy has recommended a ban on events with more than 500 people and the Prime Minister of Australia announced that from 16 March 2020, all international arrivals to Australia must self-isolate for 14 days.

We examined the possibility of running a virtual meeting however the challenges of being able to provide a high quality product from scratch in the time available were too great at this time. We had hoped to be able to postpone the meeting until later in the year however we were unable to secure an appropriate venue for this to happen. Therefore with much regret we believe it is in the interests of our members, and our community that we cancel our 44th Annual Scientific Meeting of our Division. We appreciate all the hard work put in by our companion club convenors, our speakers and sponsors towards the preparation of this meeting and understand the disappointment this will mean for our membership.

We will provide a full refund on registrations. Please contact our Academy Administrator Uma Subramanian at info@iap-aus.org.au.