From the Headquarters: February 2022

Beginning this year, an Ordinary Meeting of the Council will take place annually. We will continue to hold an in-person meeting together with the World Conference every two years. In addition, every other year, we will organise a shorter online or blended Meeting with a brief agenda.

We are delighted to announce that this year the Meeting of the Council will take place in London on Monday 27 June 2022 — a day before the WONCA Europe Conference kicks off. The Meeting will be blended: delegates will have the option to attend it either in-person or online. It will be supported by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), and the in-person part will be hosted at its Headquarters at 30 Euston Square. 

The agenda will be brief: we will start at 11 am UTC and aim to keep the business part of the meeting to just 90 minutes. Following this part, there will be a second interactive session of approximately 90 minutes, in which delegates will be divided into groups and invited to discuss key topics around WONCA and family medicine. We expect our global community to engage in fruitful dialogues and ideas exchange during this session. The WONCA Secretariat will send out participation forms soon, in which delegates can express how they intend to participate.

We are entering the third year of the pandemic, and our community continues to endure its effects. WONCA Iberoamericana has suspended the Ibero-American Summit of Family Medicine, scheduled for April 2022 in Puerto Rico. Yet, with the efforts and resilience of all, there are signs of change: in addition to the WONCA World Rural Health Conference in Limerick, Ireland, and the WONCA Europe Conference in London, United Kingdom, WONCA Africa is planning to host its conference in Abuja in November, and WONCA East Mediterranean is working on a regional conference in Oman. We also hope that our colleagues in the Asia Pacific region will soon share more exciting news with us.

Finally, with this edition of WONCA News, you may have noticed that we have changed the platform to deliver our monthly newsletter and weekly e-updates. This is part of our continuous effort to improve communications with you. A survey on the newsletter and e-updates will also be launched soon — and we would like to invite you to take a moment to fill it in, as it will help us improve and successfully deliver our promise to you.

Dr Harris Lygidakis,
WONCA CEO