November 2003

WCA reps meet with WHO officials

Drs. Yannick Pauli and Jay Zimmerman, members of the World Chiropractic Alliance (WCA) International Board of Governors, met with officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) for a special meeting that touched on a variety of topics of important to chiropractic worldwide.

Attending the meeting for WHO were Eva Wallstam, Director of WHO Civil Society Initiative; Yukiko Maruyama, assistant acting coordinator in the Traditional Medicine Team, and J. Matsomuto, Ms. Wallstam's assistant.

Among the issues discussed at the meeting was the development of guidelines for minimal chiropractic education standards.

Already underway and close to being finalized is the Traditional Medicine/ Complementary and Alternative Guidelines called "WHO Guidelines for the Consumers in Promoting Proper Use of Traditional Medicine and Complementary and Alternative Medicine."

Ms. Maruyama emphasized that this was a totally apolitical process, with no organization having direct involvement with the actual drafting of the guidelines.

"Organizations can only offer written input when solicited by WHO," Dr. Zimmerman explained. "All input is taken very seriously by WHO, but WHO is writing the guidelines, revising, and writing again."

The meeting gave WHO officials an opportunity to learn more about the World Chiropractic Alliance.

Previously, WCA Board members Drs. Terry A. Rondberg, Christopher Kent, and Matthew McCoy have traveled to Geneva to meet with WHO leaders and established an informal working relationship with WHO. In 2000, Dr. Kent, at WHO's request, created a comprehensive "Power Point" presentation on the current situation of chiropractic around the globe.

"At the meeting we stressed that the WCA is an international organization made up of individual practitioners, representing chiropractors worldwide," Zimmerman noted. "We described the different types of chiropractic practices and noted that the World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC) does not represent all of the types of chiropractic practice. We urged them to include the WCA in all chiropractic discussions, so that the entire profession will be represented. They seemed to agree with us on this point."