Inaugural address David Barbe

Presidential Inaugural address
WMA General Assembly
Córdoba, Spain (virtual)
Friday, October 30, 2020
David O. Barbe, MD MHA
President
World Medical Association
Thank you, Dr. Jorge for your excellent service as our president this past
year. Thank you to this Assembly for the confidence you have placed in
me. It is an honor and very humbling to serve as your president for the
coming year. I look forward to leading the largest and most influential
international physician organization on your behalf.
Before I begin my formal remarks, I must express my gratitude to the AMA
Board of Trustees and the AMA delegation to the WMA for the confidence
they showed by supporting my candidacy for WMA president. Thank you.
Also, a special thank you to Dr. Ardis D Hoven who was Chair of Council
during my time as a delegate to the WMA and a wonderful mentor for me
as I became familiar with the policies and processes at the WMA. Thank
you, Ardis.
I would not be in this position today if it were not for my good friend, former
AMA President and delegate to the WMA, Dr. Andrew Gurman. From the
very beginning Andy encouraged, supported, and mentored me as a WMA
delegate and then as a candidate for WMA president. Andy, I cannot thank
you enough for your friendship and your encouragement.
And last, but certainly not least, my wife, Debbie. Without her love and
support and the sacrifices she has made, I would not have been able to
serve our profession at state, national and now international levels. I could
not have asked for a better wife, partner, and friend. Thank you, Debbie!
Colleagues – friends – we find ourselves in an unusually complex and
difficult health care environment. Just look at our agenda at this meeting.
Ethical challenges, clinical challenges, protecting our profession, and
assuring quality care for patients. If this were not enough, it is even more
difficult due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It is in times like these that our fellow physicians and our patients need our
leadership more than ever. We need strong physician organizations at
every level: the WMA, our NMAs and state and local medical societies. It
takes collaboration and cooperation between our organizations and our
encouragement of one another to address these challenges. We must
function as a virtual team comprised of our professional organizations and
our physician members.
In one of my speeches to the AMA House of Delegates, I emphasized the
importance of “teamwork”. Let me quote from that speech:
“Winning teams recognize that the greatest success comes not from the
effort of one or more individuals but from a team effort. One of the greatest
individual talents in American baseball, “Babe” Ruth put it this way, “The
way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the
greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play
together, the (team) won’t be worth a dime.””
Each of you in this virtual meeting today is a strong individual leader. And
we need strong individual leaders. But more than that, we must each be
committed to the team. Committed to the WMA’s mission “to serve
humanity by endeavoring to achieve the highest international standards in
Medical Education, Medical Science, Medical Art and Medical Ethics, and
Health Care for all people in the world.” This is an ambitious goal, but we
can make significant advances in these important areas if we work together
as a WMA team.
Let me briefly touch on a few issues that I believe are most important for
the WMA.
I will start with COVID-19. Who could have imagined a pandemic of this
magnitude that would not only threaten the health of our patients but place
our physicians and nurses in danger and cripple our economies? However,
that is what we are facing, and that is what we must address. We must
continue to advocate for adequate personal protective equipment,
appropriate facilities and medical equipment, and adequate support staff.
We must work with public health officials to pursue policies that reduce the
frequency and severity of disease while at the same time allow for an
orderly and safe conduct of business and education. We must continue to
let the science lead us and be vocal advocates for evidence-based
treatment and safe and effective vaccines.
A second area that is critically important is the WMA’s unwavering
advocacy in medical ethics. It was a key reason for the founding of the
WMA in 1947 and it remains as important and relevant now as it was then.
The multiple WMA declarations and statements that address medical ethics
must be living, evolving documents that meet the changing needs of
patients, physicians and society while at the same time preserving the
essence of who we are as physicians and affirming our responsibilities to
patients and society.
This may be one of our most difficult challenges because medical ethics
rests squarely on our shoulders. We cannot delegate it or relegate it to
others. Although we must facilitate discussions among a broad group of
stakeholders, the ultimate decision on what our profession stands for is
ours alone to make.
Closely related to our position on ethical issues is our dedication to
professionalism. As physicians, we must hold ourselves to the highest
standards. We must stay committed to the core principles of the patient-
physician relationship. We must speak out and seek remedies to address
violence against patients and physicians. We must point out the
inhumanity of societal or governmental actions that target ethnic or
religious groups or that use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons
against others. I am proud of our WMA declarations and statements on
these topics, and I am encouraged that we are refining these policies as we
identify unethical and inhumane practices around the world.
One final area that needs our continued attention is our primary role as
physicians in delivering high-quality, medical care for all. We must
continue to address the inequities in health and healthcare in our
populations. At the same time, we are still battling a rise in chronic disease
worldwide.
In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the intersection of health
inequities and chronic disease even more apparent. Those already
experiencing health inequity are often those with chronic diseases who are
also at increased risk for COVID-19. Chronic diseases such as
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hypertension occur with greater
incidence in populations of color, Asians and those in lower socio-economic
sectors.
We can address both health inequities and chronic disease at this meeting.
We can improve our policies on health inequities by adopting the major
revisions to the Declaration of Oslo, and we can expand our policies on
chronic disease by adopting the WMA statement on hypertension and
cardiovascular disease.
These are just a few examples of where the WMA and our NMAs must lead
the national and international discussions on issues that will benefit our
patients, our physicians and society. I look forward to working on your
behalf during my term as president to promote the new policies from this
meeting and our extensive existing policy.
I started with a quote by Babe Ruth on the importance of working together
as a team. He made another observation that I think is equally important.
He said, “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” Your WMA
leadership will never give up in our efforts to advance our policies and
achieve our common goals.
However, we are depending on each of you as part of the WMA team to
use what we do here at the WMA to advocate on behalf of patients and
physicians to “achieve the highest international standards” in medicine “and
Health Care for all people in the world.”
Thank you.