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. 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, Istanbul 2015, Copenhagen 2016, Prague 2017, Krakow 2018, Bratislava 2019 and Online in 2020. Our first dedicated VdGM Forum was held in Barcelona in February 2014, followed by Dublin in February 2015, Jerusalem 2016, Strasbourg 2017, Porto 2018 and Torino 2019. In October 2015 in Istanbul, for the first time we met with our fellow WONCA Young Doctor Movement counterparts from all over the world. We also had very fruitful World Pro-conferences in Rio in 2016 and Seoul in 2018.
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. We have numerous programmes including Exchanges, Special Interest Groups and collaborations with all WONCA Networks.
For the future we are looking forward to preconferences in Amsterdam (2021) and London (2022), to a VdGM Forum in Edinburgh (2022), and to participating in the Abu Dhabi Global Conference and Pre-Conference in 2021.