IFMSA was present at the WONCA World Conference, Seoul 2018. WONCA is the Federation of Family Doctors and IFMSA is a member in collaborative relations since August 2014. A Memorandum of Understanding defines the relation between the two federations.
Themed “Primary Care in the Future: Professional Excellence”, the conference took place from 17th to 21st of October 2018 in Seoul, Korea. Tarek Ezzine, the Liaison Officer for Public Health issues, was present throughout the Conference and Pre-Conference (16th October), to present the IFMSA perspective at different occasions.
The schedule of the conference was diverse and consisted of plenaries, workshops, symposiums and poster presentations. During the opening ceremony, Dr. Amanda Howe (Former President of WONCA) presented the Seoul Declaration highlighting the importance of Family Medicine. She also talked about the urgent need for a sustainable Primary Health Care, scaling up to the Primary Healthcare Conference, Astana 2018, for which members of WONCA flew directly from Korea.
IFMSA presented a workshop on “Student-Led Initiatives on Social Accountability”. The participants learned about IFMSA’s Global Priority on “Social Accountability” and were introduced to the “Toolkit on Social Accountability in Medical Schools”, the “Global Social Accountability Assessment” and the “Toolkit on Public Health in Medical Curriculum”.
IFMSA was also part of the WONCA Environment Working Party’s Workshop on “A Healthy Response to Climate Change: Climate-Action Case Studies and Mentorship”. Here, IFMSA’s Global Priority on “Environment, Climate Change & Health” and IFMSA’s advocacy for Climate-Health was highlighted. We also introduced our Climate & Health Manual and the Recommendations for Sustainable & Climate-friendly Meetings.
IFMSA met with representatives from many Parties and NGOs and made connections with several of WONCA Working Parties (Education, Environment, Rural Health, Young Doctors’ Movement etc). Additionally, contacts were made with Regional and National Organizations as some country representatives of national family medicine institutions were interested in IFMSA’s work and expressed their interest to collaborate with our NMOs.
IFMSA had the pleasure to be part of the WONCA World Conference and reinforce the collaboration between IFMSA and WONCA. Our members are also invited to join and learn from such activities, starting from the upcoming Regional Conferences of WONCA and the WONCA Rural Health Conference.
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