48th World Medical Association General Assembly

The World Medical Association meets in Somerset West, Western Cape Province, South Africa from October 22 to October 26. It will be the first time the WMA has met on the southern African continent.

The 48th Assembly of the Association will take place at the Lord Charles Hotel from October 22 to 26. The Assembly is open to the media and you are invited to send a representative to attend the meeting. Among the papers to be presented to the Assembly for adoption are:

• Proposed Statement on Family Planning and the Right of a Woman to Contraception.
• Proposed Statement on Resistance to Antimicrobial Drugs which recommends ways in which national medical associations can help to combat the global increase in resistance to antimicrobial drugs.

The Assembly will also consider an application from the Haitian Medical Association to join the WMA.

During the meeting Dr Bernard Mandell, chairman of the Federal Council of the Medical Association of South Africa, will be installed as president of the WMA for 1996/7.

You are also invited to attend the Scientific Session which will be held on October 23 and 24 at the Lord Charles Hotel. The theme of the session will be ‘Human Resources Strategies for Health Care’ and those speaking will be:

• Dr Eunice Brookman-Amissah, Minister of Health, Republic of Ghana
• Mr Nicholas Crisp, Superintendent General, Department of Health and Welfare, Northern Province, South Africa
• Dr Jesper Poulsens, President of the Permanent Working Group of European Junior Hospital Doctors, from Denmark
• Dr Charles Boelen, Chief Medical Officer for Educational Development of Human Resources for Health, at the World Health Organisation, Geneva
• Professor William Pick, Head of the Department of Community Health, at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

The General Assembly will be preceded by a meeting of the WMA Council and by various Council committee meetings on October 22. These meetings will not be open to the media. Among the papers that will be considered at these meetings are:

• Proposed Statement from the American Medical Association on Family Violence calling on national medical associations to intensify and broaden their efforts to combat the universal problem of family violence.
• Proposed Declaration with Guidelines for the Quality Assessment of Health Care. The purpose of the Guidelines, submitted by the Finnish Medical Association, is to strengthen the improvement of health care for patients by means of quality assessment practices and to create ethical grounds for audit.
• Proposed Statement on Resuscitative Interventions, submitted by the Canadian Medical Association, setting out the circumstances in which cardiopulmonary resuscitation should and should not be given.
• Proposed Declaration, submitted by the Finnish Medical Association, on the Rights of the Unborn.
• Proposed revision by the American Medical Association of the Declaration on the Rights of the Patient to include the Responsibilities of the patient

Other papers which are expected to be discussed at the WMA committee meetings include a proposed Statement on weapons and their relation to life and health presented by the British Medical Association and a proposed statement on licensing of doctors fleeing prosecution for serious criminal offences, also from the BMA.