International Christian Medical and Dental Association BursaryFund     This project which has been completed assisted medical workers with burasaries to attend the 13th World ICMDA Congress, Sydney July 2006 – theme “Health and Hope” – hosted by CMDFA Inc

Here is a copy of the major parts of the final report of the project:

The congress and the associated HealthServe Australia project was designed to give workers from all countries involved better knowledge and skills to deal with

1. Global health issues such as malaria, infectious diseases, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and a range of social issues associated with these, in particular
2. HIV/AIDS and the whole subject of sexuality
3. Addiction medicine and the problems of drug trafficking
4. Leadership particularly aimed to help young graduates being suddenly thrown into leadership roles
5. Professional development on technical and ethical issues
6. Care of the terminally ill

We believe the project achieved its goals, objectives and outputs.

The project was completed during the month of July 2006 and we believe that the results of the congress met the original goals, objectives and outputs.

The project sponsored 53 participants from the following 14 countries

Democratic Republic of the Congo
Fiji
Ghana
India
Indonesia
Jamaica
Kazakhstan
Nepal
Papua New Guinea
Peoples Republic of China
Sudan
Uganda
Vanuatu
Zimbabwe 

Nearly all the participants attended

• one of the four special “Pre-congress seminars” or

• the “ICMDA World Student and Junior Graduates Conference” (abbrev. as student conference)

Which were all held at the Christian Conference Centre at Merroo From the 7^th-11^th July 2006

As well as

• the main proceedings of the “13^th ICMDA World Congress”

Held at the Sydney Convention Centre at Darling Harbour From the 11^th – 16^th July 2006

The 27 students and junior doctors on the attached list of participants attended the student conference. This was a remarkable success with 450 participants including 60 mentor graduates who assisted the other participants in small group activities. Speakers for the main sessions came from the UK, Uganda, Australia, USA, and Ghana.

Over the whole programme, all of the following component objectives were met

Sharing of best practice in HIV strategies
Linkage with WHO initiatives in adult and adolescent health
Presentation of best practice in global health issues such as TB, malaria, addiction, sexual health, care of the terminally ill
Training in Christian leadership
Training in cross cultural medical education
Documentation of conference content
 

Documentation

The main sessions of both the Student conference and the main congress were recorded on DVD with audio recordings of all the other session at the student conference and 20 of the parallel session at the main congress.

The proceedings of the HIV seminar were reviewed by all their participants and a special full page statement made for the approximately 70 member countries of ICMDA to consider. This statement was endorsed by the general governing body of the ICMDA at its meeting on the 11^th July.

The ICMDA as a result of this statement and the impetus brought through the sessions on HIV/AIDS has started what is called the “ICMDA HIV initiative”. This initiative has now developed a special website with an annual award for outstanding work in the work of preventing and assisting in the treatment of people with HIV. A significant number of member country organisations have been encouraged by this development and the first annual award which was held towards the end of 2006 had 8 nominations with the award going to a member in India. HealthServe Australia has maintained an active interest in this initiative and aims to try and develop further work to support it.

In addition the proceedings of the HIV seminar are being made in hard copy for distribution.

Leadership roles in health and health education were addressed with great satisfaction for participants in all the components of the congress – the seminars, the student conference and a number of sessions at the main congress, and cross culture training in this was addressed especially in the pre-congress seminar on whole health education as well as several specific sessions on cross cultural ministry in the student conference and the congress itself.

The response from the constituency in Australia in supporting the project was excellent and a lot of goodwill was created through the project. At the congress a special desk for HealthServe Australia was set up and this proved very useful in raising the profile of the organization.