The Asia Pacific Consortium on Osteoporosis (APCO) and the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) are collaborating to develop the 2023 Asia-Pacific Bone Health Regional Audit. The MOU of the collaboration was signed on June 27, 2023 by APCO chairperson – Prof Manju Chandran, and IOF CEO – Dr Philippe Halbout, at the IOF headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland. The audit, a milestone event for osteoporosis management in the Asia Pacific region, will be a watershed document that will put the spotlight on the status of osteoporosis and bone health in general in the AP region. It will serve as an important source of information for health care providers, epidemiologists, policy makers as well as governments world-wide.

Osteoporosis and its dreaded complication of fragility fractures, compound the burden of Asia Pacific’s rapidly ageing societies. By 2050, the number of hip fractures is projected to increase by 2.3-fold in the Asia Pacific region, to more than 2.5 million cases each year, resulting in staggering projected costs of almost USD 13 billion. Evidently, in this region more than in any other, there is an urgent need for action to reduce the projected human impact and socio-economic costs of fractures.

The work for Asia-Pacific Regional Audit 2023 will commence in the third quarter of 2023 and is set to be completed by the end of 2024. The last such audit was conducted in 2013 and it was well-received by healthcare professionals worldwide. The objective of this updated audit and the resultant publication which will have immense impact, will be to emphasize the current care gap and burden of osteoporosis and will also include important recommendations on how to manage the enormous social and health-economic challenge posed by osteoporosis and related musculoskeletal diseases with current data and updated key indicators.

The Lead Authors of the audit will be APCO Chairperson- Prof Manju Chandran who is also Senior Consultant Endocrinologist and Director of the Osteoporosis and Bone Metabolism Unit at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), Prof Ambrish Mithal – Chairman and Head of the Endocrinology and Diabetes Division, MAX Healthcare, Gurgaon, India and Prof Peter Ebeling – Head of the Department of Medicine in the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

Ms Anastasia Soulié Mlotek and Ms Satpreet Kaur will lead the project management team from IOF and APCO respectively.

The audit will consist of information gathered from surveys conducted amongst members of IOF and APCO in the Asia Pacific region, as well as through extensive literature searches. It is anticipated that the audit will have key information from more than 20 countries in the Asia Pacific region.