Full plenary room, with over 100 different countries present. The Swiss flag well in eyesight.
plunged ourselves in the work ahead of us, starting with the recommendations of the EB on whether or not to accept organizations applying for membership in IFMSA. The first time swimsa took the stage was with the task force reports. Our President, Dominic, is part of the Task Force on Investigation Mechanisms of the Supervising Council (SupCo), and he presented its report for this General Assembly. Unfortunately, in IFMSA, the SupCo needs to investigate any kind of issue it is asked to look into, which leads to a lot of personal fights to be fought out using the SupCo. The Task Force aims to rectify this situation, but due to delays in the composition of the Task Force, not a lot of work could be accomplished. Luckily, the task force was extended until next GA so as to give more time. We rounded off the morning with a discussion on the budget of the next August Meeting in Mexico. 22
swimsa
Standing Committee on Medical Education March Eich (BE), Noémie Boss (BE) & Noemi Fischer (BE) Day 2 The lack of human resources for health is a worldwide challenge. We highlighted some main aspects that contribute to this lack and reflected on solutions that could be applied to this problem. On one hand, there is a mismatch on national levels regarding the availability of doctors in cities compared to rural areas. This issue should be tackled by improving the image that future health workers have of those
rural areas through improving their knowledge of it – which could be done by implementing rotations during their training – and through the enhancement of the working conditions – e.g. raising the salary. On the other hand, there is an international migration of health workers to countries that offer better conditions such as Switzerland. As a consequence, the poorest countries are training health workers but do not receive any payback, which raises ethical issues concerning this international recruitment. Thus it is important that rich countries keep on improving their capacity building. More generally, the lack of human resources for health can be tackled by other means such as the skill mix. This means that the amount of work needed to be done by doctors can be reduced through allowing other professionals to take over some of the doctor’s duties.