WMA world medical association Projects Controversies

Projects

The WMA is active in several areas of action, but mainly in:

Advocacy

Ethics

Health Systems

Human Rights

Public Health

In what concerns Ethics, the WMA has various Declarations, Resolutions and Statements with which tries to help to guide National Medical Associations, governments and international organizations throughout the world. A wide range of subjects are covered like the rights of patients, research on human subjects, care of the sick and wounded in times of armed conflict, torture of prisoners, the use and abuse of drugs, family planning and pollution.

WMA also works on:

Medical education

Human resources planning for health care services

Patient safety

Leadership and career development

Advocacy for physicians' and patients' rights

Occupational health and safety

Democracy building for new medical associations

Public health policy

Projects such as tobacco control and immunization

The WMA also works on Education Programs such as the prison-medicine course, the MDR-TB and the TB refresher course, the ethics course and the course on microbial resistance (together with the George Mason University and the International Society for Microbial Resistance).

The WMA Medical Ethics Manual

The World Medical and Health Policy Journal

Caring Physicians of the World

Controversies

During the World Medical Association General Assembly in Reykjavik in early October 2018, members of the Canadian Medical Association stated that parts of the speech by WMA's incoming president Leonid Eidelman had been plagiarized from a speech made in 2014 by Chris Simpson (cardiologist) who was then the president of CMA. Current president Dr. Gigi Osler told the group that part of the address was "copied word for word" from Simpson's speech. "Multiple other parts of the speech were also copied from various websites, blogs and news articles, without proper appropriate attribution to the authors", she later added in a statement. A motion by Canada at the Assembly to call on Eidelman to resign was not successful. On 6 October, the CMA resigned; their press release stated that the decision was made because WMA was not upholding ethical standards.

In an email to The Canadian Press, WMA spokesman Nigel Duncan said that Eidelman's speech had been written by others and that he did not know that it might contain plagiarism. A WMA source also told The Canadian Press that Eidelman apologized at the general assembly after the Canadian delegates had departed; he "acknowledge[d] that part of his speech was taken from Simpson", and most delegates "accepted his apology" for the mistake.