Michael Kidd honoured by his peers

October 8,2014

WONCA President, Professor Michael Kidd was today honoured by his Australian peers. He received the Rose-Hunt Award - the highest accolade awarded by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP).

The Rose-Hunt Award

The Rose-Hunt Award is awarded to the RACGP Fellow or Member, who has rendered outstanding service in the promotion of the objects of the RACGP, either by individual patient care, organisation, education, research or any other means.

Prof Kidd received his award for service to the profession and leadership within the profession - examples given were his current position as President of WONCA and his past position as President of the RACGP. Prof Kidd also serves on the boards of a number of NGOs and Advisory Boards; is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Flinders University, based in Adelaide; and he has continued to work part-time as a general practitioner with a special interest in the primary care management of HIV/AIDS. To see a longer list of Prof Michael Kidd's substantial achievements click here.

The Rose-Hunt Award is a gift from the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK) to the RACGP.  On 5 October 1972, the British College presented twelve silver medals to the Australian College (RACGP) commemorating two of its own founding members, Lord Hunt of Fawley (the first Honorary secretary) and Dr Fraser Rose. The first Rose-Hunt Award was made in October 1974 to Dr William Arnold Conolly, a founding father of the RACGP.

WONCA Executive congratulates its president on receiving this prestigious award - well deserved Michael.

Michael Kidd delivers William Arnold Conolly Oration

Prof Michael Kidd also delivered the oration (pictured) at the Academic Session of the RACGP conference. The oration is named after William Arnold Conolly, the first recipient of the Rose-Hunt Award. The oration was considered one of the most outstanding of recent times and was well received by those present. An excerpt of the oration where Prof Kidd discusses WONCA follows.

You might think that WONCA is a funny name for a global health organization, and you would be right.  It started out as the first five letters of our official name, the World Organization of National Colleges and Academies of Family Medicine and General Practice, now shortened to the World Organization of Family Doctors.  But the thing about a funny name is that everybody remembers it.  In the clamour of confusing acronyms of global health organisations, our global organization’s name is highly recognizable, highly memorable and highly respected. 
 
Our strongest global supporter is the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Margaret Chan, who recently stood up at an international meeting of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine and proclaimed “I love family medicine”, which didn’t impress the members of the other medical specialties present in the room.
 
WONCA was formed by 18 colleges and academies from around the world.  WONCA now has Member Organisations representing over 500,000 family doctors in 131 countries around the world. 
 
The 500,000 family doctors represented by WONCA, and including all those of us here, each year have over 2 billion consultations with our patients.  Two billion.  That’s the scope of our current work and our influence.
 
But we need to do more. We need to work to ensure that every family doctor, every GP, every primary care doctor in the world, joins us in our commitment to education and training and to the delivery of high quality primary care to our patients and communities. Through WONCA we need to continue to support primary care research to provide the evidence on the best ways to deliver health care to the people of our nations.
 
And we need to ensure that high quality primary care is made available to all people in the world.  At the moment there are one billion people who have no access to any healthcare at all.  Access to healthcare for yourself and your family is a human rights issue, and yet it is denied to 1/7th of the world’s population.  In 2014 this is inexcusable.
 
So through WONCA we need to expand our commitment to the education and training of family doctors and the provision of quality care to the 80 nations of the world where WONCA does not yet have a presence, which includes many low income nations and lower middle income nations, including some of our nearest neighbours. 

To read the full oration transcript click here