Newsletter: September 2018

In early August I returned from a very enjoyable trip to the Royal New Zealand College of GPs (RNZCGP) who invited me to their annual conference and on the way home I also visited our colleagues in Singapore. This is the third time I have been to New Zealand, and the second time to the RNZCGP. I was struck by the major developments in ‘upscaling’ of general practice there over the last five years.

Je suis rentrée début août d’un agréable voyage au Royal New Zealand College of GPs (RNZCGP) où j’avais été invitée à la conférence annuelle et, en chemin, j’ai également rendu visite à nos collègues de Singapour.

A principios de agosto volví de un viaje que disfruté mucho durante el cual pude visitar el Real Colegio de Médicos de Familia de Nueva Zelanda (Royal New Zealand College of GPs, RNZCGP), tras aceptar su invitación para asistir al Congreso anual y, de vuelta a casa, también pasé a visitar a nuestros colegas en Singapur.

A couple of years ago I wrote on WONCA membership, and thought that I would return to this, to update members on which organizations have been admitted to WONCA membership in this biennium. WONCA now boasts over 130 Member Organizations in around 150 countries and territories and represents some 600,000 family doctors globally.

The WONCA South Asia region conference will be held from November 22-24, 2019, in Lahore, Karachi, Pakistan. The theme is "Primary Care- complete health care". The conference is hosted by the Pakistan Society of Family Physicians.

This is the first announcement in WONCA News about the WONCA Asia Pacific region conference coming in 2019 to Kyoto, Japan. The conference will be held from May 15-18, 2019

Trabajando a escala - como médicos y médicas de familia necesitamos pensar tanto a nivel pequeño como a nivel más grande – y no siempre debemos sentir que debemos avanzar nosotros solos. Algunos de los modelos en asistencia moderna ofrecen un apoyo efectivo y una mayor capacitación, mientras mantenemos como prioridad la cara humana de la Medicina de Familia.

This has been another busy year for the WONCA Working Party on Rural practice. John Wynn-Jones reports on conferences including the 15th WONCA World rural health conference held in India; as well as policies and statements, the rural seeds movement, special initiatives, networking and communication as well as future thinking.

Dr Tane A Taylor, Chair, WP on Indigenous & Minority Groups Health Issues (WWPI&MGHI) chair reports: The activities outlined in this plan have been bubbling along, but can and should be enhanced.

Ilkka Kunnamo (Finland), chair of the Working Party on eHealth reports: Time has come for me to retire from the position as convenor of the Working Party and thank all colleagues who have been involved in its activities.

The annual WONCA International Classification Committee (WICC) meeting in 2017 was held from 26 August to 1.September in Lyon/France. The main topics were the international ICPC-3 Consortium founded for the development of a new version of the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-3) under the lead of Kees van Boven at the University of Nijmegen/Netherlands and its relationship to WICC. Furthermore the WICC directly worked on the content of the future ICPC-3. Another important topic was the development of a primary care version (linearization) of ICD-11 in collaboration with WHO.

Dr William Wong, convenor for the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Health Equity reports: oOver the last year, the group has been devoted to its core agenda of promoting Health Equity in primary care.

Hagit Dascal-Weichhendler (Israel) and Kelsey Hegarty (Australia) co-convenors of the SIG on Family Violence report on activities for 2017-18 and look to the future - at the international level we are exploring the idea of offering consultancies to regional areas, to help strengthen knowledge, education and training.

Prof Maria van den Muijsenbergh, convenor, SIG on Migrant Care, International Health and Travel Medicine writes: the SIG has steadily grown over the years and now consists of a group of members from 18 different nations in Australia, South- Africa, USA, South-America, Middle-East and Europe.

Victor Ng, SIG convenor writes: Below are a few examples of the great work of our WONCA SIG EM members in various WONCA regions. While this is far from an exhaustive list, it shows the commitment of our members to promote acute and emergency medicine to the rest of our family medicine colleagues. We appreciate and are thankful for their service to our discipline.

The WONCA Special Interest Group on Ageing and Health has been reconvened in this 12 months. New convenor, Prof Dimity Pond (Australia) reports: The group has been busy producing a consensus statement about the importance of strengthening family medicine in the face of the increasing numbers of elderly people throughout the countries of the world.

We continue to recruit and welcome new members from all WONCA regions who wish to work together to strengthen the discipline of Family Medicine with a special interest on Workers Health. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Alma Declaration, Family Doctors must emphasize our passion for Primary Care,

As of 24 April 2018, there are 113 members in the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Global Point-of- Care Testing (POCT), comprising 11 Executive Members and 102 General Members; these members represent 44 different countries and all seven WONCA regions.

This is the first announcement in WONCA News about the WONCA Asia Pacific region conference coming in 2019 to Kyoto, Japan. The conference will be held from May 15-18, 2019