WONCA EMR statement at October WHO Regional Committee

WONCA EMR delivered the following statement to the 64th session of the WHO Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean held in Islamabad - Pakistan, from 9-12 October 2017 and was represented by Prof Waris Qidwai

WONCA (the World Organization of Family Doctors, see www.globalfamilydoctor.com ) has 124 Member Organizations from over 130 countries and territories, (including three new members over the past year), with membership of about 5,560,000 family doctors. WONCA's objective is to improve the quality of life of people through fostering high standards of care in family medicine.

WONCA represents and acts as an advocate for its constituent members at an international level where it interacts with world bodies such as the World Health Organization, with whom it has official relations as a non-governmental organization and is engaged in a number of collaborative projects.WONCA EMR itself has 15 member organization from 15 countries, and academic members in some further countries such as Palestine: there is active interest in WONCA membership from other countries such as Tunisia, and Palestine.

Mission of WONCA East Mediterranean region
Improve the quality of life of the peoples of the East Mediterranean through fostering and maintaining high standards of care in general practice/family medicine by providing an opportunities for exchange knowledge and information; encourage, support the development of academic organizations of general practitioners/family physicians.

The following are the core concepts for WONCA EMR:

• Strategies and health plans for the EMRO countries are focusing on family medicine specialty as a clear path to reach universal health coverage (UHC) and to move forward the achieving of sustainable developmental goals (SDGs).
• Working with every country in the region to improve their systems in order to recruit postgraduate physicians into family medicine specialty
• Consider the general practitioners / family physicians as a gate entry into the health system
• Encourage undergraduate medical students to be enrolled later in family medicine specialty
• Supporting all medical colleges in the region to establish family medicine departments.
• Creating professional family medicine / general practitioner organizations in each country of the region - even those whom are not joined WONCA yet like Yemen, Libya , Djibouti and Somalia.

Thank you