Welcome to our new country members
We are pleased to announce following the IPCRG AGM on July 20th that we have three new member countries - France, Israel and Tunisia and we have a new group GEPRAPS representing Brazil. The IPCRG Senate now has 37 countries across the spectrum of high, low and middle income countries.We are pleased that this year we introduce two new French speaking countries and look forward to a growing IPCRG Francophone network.
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Primair will be the group representing France and François Kermiche, a Family Physician, is the group Chair. He described at the AGM their priority work programmes. They will be developing the Asthma Right Care movement in France. They are currently a GP member group but want to reach out to other professional disciplines to take a multidisciplinary approach. The members are all currently involved in research and teaching and see a need for better GP education and plan to develop materials to help better inhaler choices and technique. They want to be a key partner in developing guidelines in France and they would like to be recognised as the respiratory voice of the French college of family medicine.
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The Israel Family Physicians Association will be the representative group in Israel and Tony Heymann, a family physician and primary care researcher will be our senate colleague. They have already identified a problem of inappropriate pharmacotherapy choices in COPD and have been looking at potential quality indicators to help improve respiratory care in primary care. They are active in training GP’s online in asthma, COPD, good inhaler choices and technique. As we see in many countries, there is over-reliance on SABA and under treatment with inhaled steroids in asthma. Spirometry is not very accessible and many people need to travel too far to get this essential test. They want to influence their health fund system to support asthma and COPD registers to help improve respiratory care and demonstrate that better outcomes for chronic respiratory disease requires better resource in primary care.
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We heard from Maha Ben Moallem, a Family physician and the lead for IPCRG-Tunisia They have a good relationship with colleagues in the APPA pulmonologist and allergists group in Tunisia and the new group formation has been supported by the President of APPA Habib Ghedira, Professor of Respiratory Medicine. Tunisia needs tools and guidelines to support primary care and to be a foundation of education in primary care. There is a great opportunity for the primary care specialist to work with the allergist and pulmonologist to have a greater impact. Tunisia has both private and public medicine services and sometimes people are not treated in the right place. Empowering the primary care physician will help the patient reach the right physician for their needs and this is a key priority for the Tunisian health system.
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Brazil has previously been represented by Brazil GRESP and the new group called GEPRAPS has been formed to ensure their future growth. GEPRAPS was represented at the AGM by Juliana Franceschini, Respiratory Physiotherapist and Sonia Martins, Family Physician and group coordinator. They are a group of clinicians and researchers. They want to develop networks where heath professionals exercise more critical reflection about respiratory care. They are developing educational programmes including a virtual training module for COPD. They are working broadly with broad professional groups and also with patients. Building a bigger social media presence is important and also to provide more material in the Portuguese language. In Brazil there is a lot to do with influencing health policy and they are working hard to construct new partnerships.
One of IPCRGs key strengths is in the networks we build and the longstanding relationships, collaborations and friendships formed. We look forward to our current senate members building new relationship with our new countries and we hope to bring you new members at next years meeting.