WONCA Executive meet in Mumbai

February, 2012

The Wonca Executive committee met in Mumbai, India from December 14–17, 2011 just prior to the regional conference of the Wonca South Asia region. The three- day meeting consisted of morning sessions during which the Executive committee met to deal with organizational matters, whilst the afternoon sessions were reserved for selection interviews of four short-listed candidates for the post of Wonca Chief Executive Officer. All members of the Executive committee were present. 

Some of the key issues discussed during the morning sessions included:

Review of GroW (Group to redesign the operations of Wonca)

The Executive Committee reviewed and accepted the GROW action items from the Cebu Executive Meeting and the relevant reports from the committees assigned with specific tasks. It felt no changes were required and accepted the progress update on the GROW action items.

I will be writing more on the GROW report in the next issue of Wonca News.

Review of the financial situation of Wonca

A considerable amount of the meeting time was spent by the Executive Committee in looking at the financial state of the organization. There were adjustments made to budget items and several applications by wonca regions, working parties and committees for supplementary budgets, for 2012, were discussed and allocations made where it was felt justified given the limitations of Wonca finances.

Approval of application of Wonca membership in the various categories

The Executive Committee considered the applications for Wonca membership and the recommendations of the Wonca Membership Committee and approved the following:

Full Wonca Membership:

  • Indian Medical Association-College of General Practitioners (IMA-CGP).
  • The Japan Primary Care Association.
  • The Association of General Practitioners in Macedonia

Associate Wonca Membership:

  • The Association of Departments of Family Medicine (ADFM), USA.
  • The Association of Family Physicians of India (AFPI).

Wonca Academic Membership:

  • The Hofstra-NSLIJ School of Medicine, Family Medicine Department, USA.

The Wonca Website and its re-vamp

The CEO informed the Executive committee of the resignation of the Wonca webmaster, Alex Wescott, which was accepted with regret by the committee. Alex’s resignation took effect from January 24, 2012. Alex had been the webmaster since the start of the website, in 2004, and had seen the website grow to its present state.

He also briefed the committee on plans to re-design and revamp the whole website and presented to the committee the terms of contract with BMD, the company selected for the re-design and management of the website, after the resignation of the current webmaster. The terms of the contract were accepted by the Executive committee.

The terms of the contract with HWR, the advertizing and marketing company appointed earlier by Executive committee, at its meeting in Cebu City to create a revenue stream for the website, were also discussed and accepted; with an amendment of reference to be made to Wonca’s Ethical Policies and Guidelines for Medical and Health Information Sites on the Internet as an appendix to the agreement.

As part of the redesign of the Wonca Website, Executive agreed to also not renew the expired contracts of the three medical editors for Journal Alerts with effect from January 1, 2012. The newly appointed Wonca Editor will be requested to re-look at how Journal Alerts can be re-instituted on the website with minimal cost to Wonca.
Upgrade of the SIG on the Environment to a Wonca Working Party.

The Wonca Executive approved the upgrading of the Special Interest Group (SIG) on the Environment to a Wonca Working Party, as the SIG had been very active in the past triennium and contributed at Wonca regional meetings, with involvement of increasing number of active and interested members.

The Wonca World Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Executive committee discussed the issue of exactly in which year the world conference should be held in Rio, Brazil. The committee took into consideration the ongoing work by the conference committee on re- organizing Wonca conferences; and the results of its recent survey of member organizations. The Executive finally decided to have the Rio Conference, in 2016, as earlier planned.

Dr Alfred Loh
Chief Executive Officer
World Organization of Family Doctors
Email: [email protected]