CHOGM: Commonwealth Doctors Host Session

The Commonwealth Medical Association (CMA) has won the bid to host a session at the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) People’s Forum that is slated for June in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting is an annual meeting of all of the 54 Heads of Government in the 54 countries that are a part of the Commonwealth of Nations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CHOGM meeting was unable to be held in the last two years.

However, recent developments have led the Commonwealth Secretariat in London to announce that a physical meeting of the CHOGM will be held in Kigali, Rwanda.

Dr. Osahon Enabulele, the President of the Commonwealth Medical Association , CMA, stated that following a critical appraisal of the submitted bids by a Review Panel of the Commonwealth Foundation, the successful bids for the only available six sessions had been formally announced by the Foundation, with the Commonwealth Medical Association’s bid amongst the successful bids. As a result, the Commonwealth Medical Association has been granted approval to host a session on the opening day of the 2022 CHOGM People’s Forum that is billed for Tuesday, 21st of June, 2022.

According to Dr. Enabulele, the CMA was excited at the approval. He explained that this was in line with CMA’s earlier commitment to organising a special Summit on Human Resource for Health in the advance of the CMA declarations at the November 2021 Conference/Council meeting, amongst which was a declaration that had called upon the Heads of Government in the Commonwealth as well as the Commonwealth Secretariat to declare a state of emergency on Human Resource for Health (HRH) in the Commonwealth as a result of the poor state of HRH in the LMIC countries and the negative impact it had on the quest for attainment of Universal Health Coverage.

Enabulele said he will be leading a 30-member delegation of the CMA to the session which will be centered on the current crisis of Human Resource for Health and its link with health inequality in the Commonwealth of Nations.

While he called upon physicians, health administrators as well as other health professionals who wished to join the CMA delegation to the session that is billed to be held on the 21st of June, 2022 to quickly indicate so through the email:[email protected], he also mentioned that a team of experts have been assembled to brainstorm on the CMA session’s chosen theme which is: Human Resource for Health and Health inequality in the Commonwealth: a Critical Appraisal of Brain Drain amongst healthcare professionals and workers in the Commonwealth of Nations.”