FROM THE PRESIDENT M A R C H
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CREDIT COVER PHOTO: CHEN LIU
“NO MAN IS AN ISLAND” From: “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions” by, John Donne, 1624
F R O M
The evidence is mounting steadily and it’s convincing: Health systems based on Primary Care achieve better health results and at a lower cost. Primary Care is now considered a prerequisite for achieving Universal Health Coverage. This commitment appears in various high-level political agreements approved by international leaders during the last 5 decades. In 2018, when members and leaders of WHO and the UN approved the Astana Declaration, WONCA was broadly represented, as were many other professional organizations representing Primary Care health workers.
T H E
Nonetheless, this prioritizing of Primary Care has proved very difficult to implement. Certain counterforces are easily identified and well known, the most obvious being the growing fragmentation of all medical disciplines, and the rapid development of technology driven by strong commercial interests.
P R E S I D E N T
These are general trends and affect many aspects of society, health and education systems in particular. Neither WONCA nor individual doctors could possibly alter the direction of this development on their own. Once we understand how these global, societal trends impact our local, everyday context, however, we can mobilize pushback, from the bottom up.
I have experienced it time and again, in practice and in advocacy: although Primary Care givers from differing professions share the same vision, we too often fail to identify and utilize the potential for synergy that our collaboration offers.
This is where self-scrutiny helps.
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