World Organization of Family Doctors

6th WONCA World Rural Health Conference, to be held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It will be hosted by the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC). There will also be a Post-Conference Networking Rural Meeting organized by the Portuguese Association in Braga (Portugal), September 28th to 29th, 2003

The 16th WONCA Conference ended recently, after demonstrating the challenges that are to be faced by doctors worldwide.

Theme: Family Medicine: the leading edge

The World Congress of Family Doctors will take on the leading cause of death worldwide - tobacco use - when it calls for action against tobacco at their international conference in Durban in May. The World Organisation of Family Doctors (Wonca) will launch its own Global Call to Action on Tobacco at the 16th Wonca World Congress. This initiative will be spearheaded by the co-chairpersons of the Wonca Task Force on Tobacco Cessation, Dr Michael Bolan from Ireland and Dr Rick Botelho from New York. Wonca, representing thousands of family practitioners worldwide, will call on its members to support this initiative. The Wonca task force will establish international and regional networks of family physicians and educators in family medicine at the congress, to ensure that its message reaches all corners of the globe and that its aims are realised. In addition, the task force will run a workshop at the congress to provide training for doctors in a sophisticated, motivational approach to smoking cessation. This approach has been developed from clinical practice, research evidence and a range of theories and models on health behaviour change. (Source: Daily News, 27 March 2001)