World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA)

  • Description
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    Wonca is made up of national col­leges, acad­e­mies or orga­ni­za­tions con­cerned with the aca­d­e­mic aspects of gen­eral fam­ily prac­tice. Begin­ning with 18 mem­bers in 1972, there are now 120 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions in 99 coun­tries. This includes 10 orga­ni­za­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tions with Wonca. In all, the total mem­ber­ship of the mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions of Wonca is over 250,000 gen­eral practitioners/​family physicians.

    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.

    What is Wonca’s mission?

    The mis­sion of Wonca is to improve the qual­ity of life of the peo­ples of the world through defin­ing and pro­mot­ing its val­ues, and by fos­ter­ing and main­tain­ing high stan­dards of care in gen­eral practice/​family med­i­cine by pro­mot­ing per­sonal, com­pre­hen­sive and con­tin­u­ing care for the indi­vid­ual in the con­text of the fam­ily and the com­mu­nity, encour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of aca­d­e­mic orga­ni­za­tions of gen­eral practitioners/​family physi­cians, pro­vid­ing a forum for exchange of knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion between mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions of gen­eral practitioners/​family physi­cians, and rep­re­sent­ing the edu­ca­tional, research and ser­vice pro­vi­sion activ­i­ties of gen­eral practitioners/​family physi­cians before other world orga­ni­za­tions and forums con­cerned with health and med­ical care.

    Who runs Wonca?

    A Coun­cil com­pris­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions and the offi­cers of Wonca gov­erns Wonca. It meets every three years at the time of Wonca world con­fer­ences. A small Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee meets twice yearly to con­duct the busi­ness of the orga­ni­za­tion between Coun­cil meet­ings. The mem­bers of Exec­u­tive include the World Pres­i­dent, Pres­i­dent Elect, Imme­di­ate Past Pres­i­dent, three Mem­bers at Large and Regional Pres­i­dents from each of the seven Wonca regions: Africa, North Amer­ica, Asia Pacific, Europe, Mid­dle East South Asia, Iberoamericana-​CIMF and Wonca East Mediter­ranean Region (pro­tem). The Wonca World Sec­re­tariat has been located in Sin­ga­pore since 1 May 2001*.

    What does Wonca do?

    Wonca has an impact on the world of gen­eral practice/​family med­i­cine through its World Coun­cil and its Regional Coun­cils in the seven regions. It has com­mit­tees on mem­ber­ship, finance, bylaws, pub­li­ca­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and work­ing groups on the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of prob­lems encoun­tered in gen­eral fam­ily prac­tice, rural prac­tice, qual­ity assur­ance, infor­mat­ics, edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pub­li­ca­tions, research, health behav­iour change, tobacco ces­sa­tion, women and fam­ily med­i­cine, men­tal health, and res­pi­ra­tory dis­eases. There are spe­cial inter­est groups on eth­i­cal issues in gen­eral prac­tice and travel med­i­cine, elderly care. These groups com­prise hun­dreds of fam­ily doc­tors who meet three yearly, some­times more often, and in between work by cor­re­spon­dence. Over the years they have car­ried out ground­break­ing stud­ies and research, and have pro­duced a vari­ety of impor­tant publications.

    Rela­tions with Other Bodies

    Wonca has offi­cial rela­tions with the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion as a non-​governmental orga­ni­za­tion and is engaged in a num­ber of col­lab­o­ra­tive projects

    Details

    Phone +65.6224.2886
    Location ,

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