From the CEO's desk: Young Doctors and Family Doctor Day

Photo: WONCA CEO, Garth Manning (circled), with a group of young doctors from the Rajakumar Movement, in Chinese Taipei.

WONCA Young Doctors’ Movements

We really are blessed in WONCA. In each of our seven regions we now have a Young Doctors’ Movement (YDM), helping to support and encourage and develop the next generation of family doctors and WONCA leaders. At two recent conferences – WONCA South Asia in Dhaka and WONCA Asia Pacific in Taipei – I’ve been privileged to take part in sessions run by the regional YDMs – the Spice Route in South Asia and The Rajakumar Movement (TRM) in Asia Pacific. In both cases I was hugely impressed by the energy and motivation of our young colleagues, and there was lots of evidence that our specialty is safe in the hands of the next generation.

For the Spice Route, Bhavna Matta (India) has taken over from Raman Kumar and built on the strong foundations he developed. Similarly in Asia Pacific, Shin Yoshida (Japan) has built on Naomi Harris’s hard work to take TRM to even higher heights.

In Iberoamericana-CIMF too the Waynakay Movement goes from strength to strength. I wasn’t able to get to the Montevideo conference, but Michael Kidd tells me that Waynakay, now under the leadership of Andrea de Angulo (Colombia) showed the same great energy and enthusiasm of the other groups.

Of course our oldest YDM is the Vasco da Gama Movement (VdGM) in Europe, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year in Lisbon. Now led by Peter Sloane (Ireland) VdGM has always been an immensely strong and active movement, amply demonstrated by its recent forum held over two days in Dublin. There are a couple of great clips on YouTube from the forum, one showing the messages of greeting sent to VdGM from other young doctors’ movements (and from our President) which can be viewed here. The second clip is a short (three minute) summary of the Forum, made by Ulrik Kirk. Also in this month's news are several reports from the Forum. 



Coming up we look forward to inputs from Al Razi Movement, led by Nagwa Hegazi of Egypt, at the WONCA Eastern Mediterranean conference in Dubai at the end of April, and from AfriWON, led by Kayode Alao of Nigeria, at the WONCA Africa conference in Accra starting on 6th May.

Vasco da Gama will again meet during the WONCA Europe meeting in Istanbul in October, and among the many highlights will be a pre-conference, which WONCA is pleased to support. This will also feature key leaders from all seven WONCA YDMs, as well as Dr Raman Kumar, the WONCA YDM representative on Executive, who does so much to facilitate discussion and communication between the groups and to act as a link to WONCA Executive.

I haven’t yet mentioned North America, but here too the young doctors are thriving. Polaris, led by Kyle Hoedebecke (USA), really hit the ground running at its formation last year – on World Family Doctors Day on 19th May.

Much more information on all WONCA Young Doctors Movements, including the leaders and their contact details, can be found on the WONCA website

World Family Doctor Day 2015

World Family Doctor Day – 19th May - was first declared by the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) in 2010 and it has become a day to highlight the role and contribution of family doctors in health care systems around the world.

Last year many of our colleagues across the globe celebrated the day by organising a variety of events and activities, and we received reports from many countries. This year we want to encourage even more organizations to celebrate in appropriate style on 19th May, and we look forward to receiving reports to show and tell.

WONCA News will publish as many reports as we can, to highlight the really wonderful work done by so many of our great Member Organisations. All news and reports from Member Organizations should be sent to [email protected]  

This year we have a number of possible posters on the website for downloading. We have also developed a new Family Doctor Day logo (pictured), available via the website. Have a look at all of these here.

Until next month.

Dr Garth Manning
CEO