The WONCA Europe network for new and future general practitioners / family physicians
The Vasco da Gama movement is the WONCA Europe Network for New and Future General Practitioners / Family Physicians. The movement was born at the 2004 WONCA Europe conference in Amsterdam.
In January 2005 at a meeting in Lisbon, the vision, aims and objectives were set down. Lisbon was the home port of Vasco da Gama, and the place from where he set out on his voyage of discovery. For this reason his name was chosen to represent the Movement. The Vasco da Gama Movement was formally launched at the Kos WONCA Europe Conference in September 2005.
Successful preconferences have been held in Florence 2006, Paris 2007, Istanbul 2008, Basel 2009, Malaga 2010, Warsaw in 2011, Vienna 2012, Prague 2013, Lisbon 2014 and Istanbul 2015. Our first dedicated VdGM Forum was held in Barcelona in February 2014, followed by Dublin in February 2015. In October 2015 in Istanbul, for the first time we met with our fellow WONCA Young Doctor Movement counterparts from all over the world.
Other noteable milestones in the history of VdGM include the establishment of the VdGM Fund in 2012, celebrating our tenth anniversary in Lisbon in 2014 along with publication of our 10th Anniversary Book, the inauguration of the VdGM "Being Young Staying Young Award" in February 2015, and VdGM being granted full recognition as a Network of WONCA Europe in October 2015.
For the future we are looking forward to preconferences in Prague (2017) and Krakow (2018), to VdGM Forums in
Jerusalem (2016) and France (2017), and to participating fully in the first global preconference at WONCA World in Rio in 2016.