Announcing the winner of the John J. Sciarra IJGO Prize Paper Award for 2020

Abstract

The editors of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics (IJGO) are pleased to announce the winner of the prize paper award for the best clinical research paper from a lowor middleincome country published in IJGO during 2020. The winning paper is: Santhosh Kuriakose, Sasidharanpillai Sabeena, Damodaran Binesh, Jazeel Abdulmajeed, Nagaraja Ravishankar, Amrutha Ramachandran, Bindu Vijaykumar, Nurul Ameen. Diagnostic accuracy of selfcollected vaginal samples for HPV DNA detection in women from South India. Int J Gynecol Obstet. 2020;149(2):219– 224. It was published in the May 2020 issue of IJGO. This award brings with it a stipend of £800, a certificate of recognition, and complimentary access to the online version of the IJGO for a period of 1 year from the date the prize is awarded. All clinical research articles submitted to the IJGO from lowand middleincome countries that were published in 2020 were considered for this prize. The paper was chosen from 94 qualifying articles. Selection and review were undertaken by the editors and the decision was endorsed by the Editorial Board of IJGO. The winning paper by Kuriakose et al. was a highly practical study comparing selfcollected vaginal samples by patients. These samples were then compared with physiciancollected samples from the cervix in order to detect HPV DNA. The overall agreement between the two sampling methods was 94%. Using vaginal samples collected by the patients, the sensitivity of HPV detection was 98.9% and the specificity was 100%. The conclusion from this excellent study was that selfcollection of vaginal samples ensures equity of cervical cancer screening in lowincome countries such as India. Additional papers that are worthy of special recognition are awarded an honorable mention. While the honorable mention recognition does not include a financial award, each author receives a certificate of recognition and a letter of commendation from the editors of IJGO. The IJGO Prize Paper Award was established in 1998 for the purpose of encouraging investigators, especially young scientists, from lowand middleincome countries to submit their best clinical research articles for publication in the journal. IJGO is the official publication of FIGO (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics), the primary international organization for the specialty of obstetrics and gynecology. FIGO is dedicated to enhancing the health care of women worldwide. The following 11 papers receive an honorable mention: