Report from Vice President for Western Pacific
Dr. Bong Ok Kim – MWIA Regional Vice President for Western Pacific
The Western Pacific Regional Meeting was held via the zoom platform on March 30, 2024 at 3:00 PM Korean Time (GST+9).
Representatives from the Australian Federation of Medical Women (Magdalena Simonis, Hong Kong Women Doctors’ Association (Cissy Yu), Japan Medical Women’s Association (Yoshiko Maeda), Philippines Medical Women’s Association (Vivina Chiu, Rosa Nancho), Taiwan Medical Women’s Association (HW Chuang) and Korea (Kyung Ah Park, Hyun-Wook Baik, Soon Won Hong, Sarah Chay) participated in this meeting.
The next WPR Conference will be held at the Waterfront Hotel, Cebu, Philippines on July 11~13, 2024 in conjunction with the 73rd PMWA Annual Convention with the theme of Empowering Women in Medicine and Leadership. The local organizing committee has been working hard to put together this REAL face to face meeting. The next regional conference after the Philippines will be Australia according to the Rota and will be held in 2027. The Australian Federation of Medical Women will celebrate its Centennial at the same time.
Next on the VP Rota for WPR is Taiwan and TMWA will officially nominate according to Statutes and By-Laws.
Nominations were invited for the Kyung Ah Park Award which was inaugurated at the WP regional conference organized by Korean MWA and held in hybrid format in 2021. This Award is to promote the development of WPR of MWIA and is in recognition of Dr. Kyung Ah Park. Dr. Park is a beloved prominent Korean Medical Woman who served as WPR VP and MWIA President as well as the president of KMWA. The inaugural award was given to Dr. Cissy Yu from Hong Kong in 2021.
I participated in CSW68 which was held in New York on March 11 ~ 22, 2024, including the parallel event which MWIA held on March 12 with the theme Elimination of Gender-based Inequalities in Healthcare to Achieve Gender Equality.
As the 226th Council session of the World Medical Association (WMA) will be held in Seoul, Korea on April 18~20, 2024 I will be representing MWIA and be a keynote speaker at the Women in Medicine luncheon session organized by WMA President Dr. Lujain Alquodmani. Dr. Kyung Ah Park will be one of the panelists in the same session.
Dr. Cissu Yu from Hong Kong wanted to thank MWIA President and Exco for the outstanding achievement in solving the chronic problem of registration of MWIA in Switzerland overcoming many difficulties.
Dr. Magdalena Simonis from Australia shared the opportunity for other countries to work together with the “Reproductive Health Coalition”, which is being organized with international collaboration.