This Thursday, May 19, was World Family Doctor Day and Medical Forum would like to thank all our GPs, surgeons and specialists for their tireless work supporting the West Australian community, through what has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging times in recent medical history.
World Family Doctor Day was first declared by the World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA) in 2010, and over the last 12 years it has become an occasion to celebrate the role and contribution of family doctors and primary care teams in healthcare systems around the world.
WONCA’s membership is comprised of more than 500,000 GPs working in the field across some 110 countries and the organisation states that its’ members care for almost 90% of the world’s population.
According to the group, this celebration is the perfect opportunity to acknowledge the central role that family doctors have in the delivery of personal, comprehensive, and continuing health care for patients.
In Australia, the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mr Greg Hunt, lauded the nation’s GPs for playing an essential role in protecting the health of the community during the pandemic, especially those most at risk.
“On World Family Doctor Day… we are proud in Australia to recognise the critically important work undertaken by medical practitioners on the front line every day, as part of Australia’s health care system which is experiencing unprecedented challenges with the national emergency resulting from the COVID pandemic,” Mr Hunt said.
He highlighted that clinical professionals working in general practice immediately rose to the challenge of ensuring testing for their patients who had symptoms, or who were at risk of COVID.
“These hard-working medical professionals have continued to ensure that their patients receive attention for their acute health problems, ongoing management of their chronic health problems and mental health concerns, and essential preventive care measures,” Mr Hunt said.
“On this important day, we are immensely proud to take this opportunity to praise medical practitioner colleagues internationally in countries all around the world, and the exceptional contributions they make to the health and wellbeing of the people of each nation during the COVID pandemic.”
Similarly, WONCA’s president, Dr Anna Stavdal, thanked GPs globally for their incredible efforts in combatting the pandemic but said it was also important to use World Family Doctor Day as a platform to advocate for greater integration of social services and community health systems.
“Each and every one of us can also seize the moment, individually, to advocate on behalf of our field in the communities where we work and live,” Dr Stavdal said.
“Because we genuinely seek ‘Health for All’, we need to broaden our definition of ’Health Care’ to reflect our awareness that health and social care are fundamentally inseparable.
“We can then put that into practice, locally, by interweaving our communities’ health and social service systems.
“On Family Doctor Day, I’d like us to deliver this message to our politicians and policymakers, ‘please help us bridge the gaps between health and social care.’”