WONCA South Asia Region: April 2023
Authors:
Dr. Tariq Aziz, President WONCA South Asia Region (SAR)
Dr. Hina Jawaid, Chair WONCA SAR Primary Care Research Network
Dr. Ramakrishna Prasad, Editor WONCA SAR Journal
WONCA Working Party on Women and Family Medicine(WWPWFM) South Asia Region (SAR)
Authors: Dr Sharmeen Shiraz, General Practitioner in Sri Lanka & Secretary Spice Route YDM, Sri Lanka & Dr Hina Jawaid, Associate Professor & Head of Department Family Medicine at University of Health Lahore, Pakistan.
The Inaugural session took place on the 8th March at 2 – 3PM Pakistan standard time, 2:30 PM India & Sri Lanka, 2:45 PM Nepal, 3:00 PM Bangladesh & Bhutan standard time as scheduled.
Dr Hina Jawaid welcomed all participants and thanked all panelists for their valuable time.
Prof Karen Flegg, President Elect WONCA, congratulated all the participants including the gentlemen. She spoke about this special day as a day to celebrate Women/Doctors and leaders. She also emphasized on gender equality and hopes to see some of the faces on today’s session at Sydney WONCA Conference 2023.
Prof Amanda Howe Past Chair WWPWFM and Past President of WONCA, mentioned that she was familiarized with WONCA through the women working party. She is convinced that together as a working party we can do something in the future.
Prof Amanda Barnard, Past Chair of WWPWFM, was our next speaker and she was impressed to see so many young women. She can definitely see a change in the working party as she was part of the early phase of this party and wishes the best in the future.
Dr Tariq Aziz, SAR President, also congratulated Dr Hina and all the panelists.
Dr Elizabeth Reji Chair of WWPWFM gave an elaborate presentation.
She congratulated every woman, a mother, a child, leader, trainer on this Women’s Day and mentioned that it is also a day to celebrate the advancement of technology which has brought such great individuals together on the forum today.
She spoke about the history and background of the Wonca working party on Women and Family Medicine.
She spoke that it is forums and sessions of this nature that help to connect, make great friends, advisers, mentors, and overtime brings about changes in oneself through learning from others and this helps with behavior towards patients.
She emphasized the importance of being a woman and our voice has to be raised to bring change.
She also spoke about the vision of Wonca working party on Women and Family Medicine.
She then gave an overview of the vision of this year: to have a Regional team and a Communication team.
She was impressed that Dr Hina who was entitled the Regional Lead South Asia, just 10 days back was able to work to bring a team of 28 members from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and India at such a short span of time and was happy to know that out of 18 abstracts submitted for the Wonca Sydney conference 2023, 8 were from SAR region.
She got familiar with the WWPWFM SAR: Introduced the regional lead, communication rep, young doctor rep and national lead for each country. She officially announced the opening of the new chapter in the South Asia Region: The WWPWFM:SAR.
Regional Lead: Dr Hina Jawaid
Communication Lead: Dr Sharmeen Shiraz
Young Dr Lead: Dr Gunjan Jha
National leads:
Bangladesh – Dr Paramita Karim
Bhutan – Dr Kinley Bhutti
India – Dr Srividhya Raghavendran
Nepal – Dr Rajani Giri
Pakistan – Dr Hina Jawaid
Sri Lanka – Dr Dilini Illapperuma Baranage
The session then ended with the introduction of the participants.
Dr Jyotika Gupta
Dr Srividhya Raghavendran
Dr Sharmeen Shiraz
Dr Gunjan Jha
Dr Naseem Basit
Dr Dilini Illapperuma Baranage
Dr Aruna Vinod
Dr Saadia Mustafa
Dr Serin Kuriakose
Dr Akshaya Nagaraj
Dr Kabita Batooja
Dr Saba Gul
Dr Zainab Hafeez
Dr Zara Mohamed
Dr Sankha Randenikumara
Dr Gobith Ratnam
Dr Marjorie Cross
Dr Tehzeeb Zulfiqar
Training and educational activities for Family physicians in SAR
Authors: Dr Srividhya Raghavendran, Family Physician and Head of Department Family Medicine, Bangalore Baptist Hospital, India, Dr Hina Jawaid Associate Professor & Head of Department of Family Medicine at University of Health Lahore, Pakistan
1- Online sessions arranged by Primary Care Research Network SAR
(a)- Community based Primary Care activities and promoting Basic Life Support at undergraduate level by Dr Abdul Jalil Khan on 17th Jan 2023
(b)- Community based Primary care- sharing experiences from South Punjab, Pakistan by Dr Muhammad Raza on 24th March 2023
2- Communication skills workshop for post-graduates enrolled in the Fellowship programme in Family Medicine was held on 17th March 2023 at St. John’s Medical College, India . This fellowship programme is a one-year distance education programme with 2 weeks of contact session for face-to face learning.
3. Training Workshop on Family Planning and Contraception
A training workshop was conducted for the MCGP trainees (Member of College Practitioners) on the 18th of March at the Family Planning Association (FPA) Sri Lanka.
It was organized by the Spice Route Young Doctor’s Movement Sri Lanka in collaboration with the College of General Practitioners Sri Lanka.
Resource person
Dr Nuzrath Nazoordeen (Director FPA Sri Lanka)
Dr Aysha Ziauddin (MRCOG,MRCGP)
Representatives
Dr Dilini Illapperuma Baranage (Secretary College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka)
Dr Sharmeen Shiraz ( Secretary Spice Route Young Doctor’s Movement Sri Lanka)
A total of 30 participants were in attendance. It commenced at 8 am and ended at 2pm and trainees got hands-on experience with the use of models to insert Intrauterine device and Implants.Paticipants were given a certificate at the end of the program.