Two Billion Patients Visit Family Doctors Yearly

Over two billion patients
consult family doctors every year across the world.
The President, World Organization of National Colleges of academics (WONCA), Dr Henry Sota, who disclosed this in his address at the WONCA World Family Doctors Day in Port Harcourt, recently, said that the Academic represents over 500,000 family doctors based in all regions of the world.
Sota, who is also the president of Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN) in Rivers State said that the association would do more to bring all general medical practitioners to its fold.
He urged the association to expand its interests to the education and training of doctors and primary healthcare research to all nations of the world.
“And we need to work with the World Health Organization and our other global partners to ensure the continuing support for strong family medicine to ensure the delivery of quality primary health care and universal health coverage in every community in every country”, he said.
Sota said WONCA’s World Family Doctors Day was established to acknowledge the important work of family doctors in the health need of the people.
Also speaking, Chief Medical Director of Rivers State Hospital Management Board, Dr Okikere Iragunima, said that the board was aware of the importance of family health doctors to the society, describing them as the bedrock of medicine to the family.
Iragunima said that this situation underscored the need for encouragement of family doctors and physicians.
In her speech, the Medical Director of Braithwait Memorial Specialist Hospital (BMSH), Dr Mrs Olukanmi V.  Jeruh said that family doctors render crucial services as far as the health sector is concerned adding that the celebration provided an opportunity for them to deliberate on ways of improving their services to the society.