Ukrainian Medical Association of North America sets its sights on Canada (06/19/05)

Ukrainian Medical Association of North America sets its sights on Canada

by Oksana Zakydalsky
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

TORONTO - Founded in 1950, the Ukrainian Medical Association of North America (UMANA), for the first time in 20 years, is holding both its Scientific Conference and the Assembly of Delegates in Canada on June 29 to July 3 in Edmonton.

The Canadian site was chosen as the venue as this year Alberta celebrates its centenary and delegates will have the opportunity to experience Canada Day as well as Alberta's Ukrainian life such as the Ukrainian Heritage Village and the Vegreville Ukrainian Pysanka Festival. The city is only hours away from Lake Louise, Jasper and Banff national parks of the Canadian Rockies.

But most importantly, UMANA wants to stress that it is a North American organization, uniting five Canadian and 13 American chapters into one professional organization with the purpose of promoting the health of Ukrainians worldwide - especially in Ukraine.

As it is chapter activity that draws members, UMANA hopes to expand its network in Canada beyond the current five cities where it has chapters: Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Saskatoon.

The association is not only for physicians; it encourages other professionals in the health and medical fields to join. It has several categories of members: regular, emeritus, associate, resident and student. By structuring its fees according to ability to pay, UMANA hopes to attract new members, especially students, who pay no dues, and associate members (persons from Ukraine with medical training who have not yet qualified to practice in North America) who do not pay for the first two years. Only regular members - 56 percent of the total membership - pay the full $175 annual dues. Membership has been growing steadily for the past four years and currently there are 475 active members.

On May 7 the UMANA board of directors met in Toronto to take care of business and make final plans for the Edmonton gathering, which is being organized under the supervision of the Edmonton Branch, headed by Dr. Wayne Tymchak. UMANA is headed by Dr. Bohdan Iwanetz, president, and Dr. Andrew Iwach, president-elect.

UMANA sponsors regular conferences, publishes a Ukrainian-language medical journal (Likarskyi Visnyk) and a popular English-language newsletter, the UMANANews, for all of its members. It partially funded the publication of a Ukrainian-English Dictionary of Medical Terminology. The Association is the chief constituent member of the World Federation of Ukrainian Medical Organizations (WFUMO).

The UMANA Foundation is a non-profit corporation created in 1996 to foster improvement in the health care of Ukrainians worldwide through research, education and the publication of a scientific medical journal in Ukrainian. UMANA has provided grants for projects such as first aid books for Ukrainian summer camps, six dialysis machines for Kyiv and an AIDS teaching program on English and Ukrainian CDs developed in 2003.

The teaching program, in presentation format, was made to help doctors in Ukraine train other medical personnel in AIDS prevention. AIDS has become a serious problem in Ukraine: in 2002 up to 400,000 persons were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS, where 75 percent of those infected with HIV were people between the ages of 15 and 27.

The guest of honor at the gala dinner slated to be held on July 2 during the Scientific Conference and Assembly of Delegates in Edmonton will be Dr. Mykola Polishchuk, minister of health of Ukraine. Dr. Polishchuk, a graduate of Uzhhorod University, was born in 1944 and is a neurologist and professor in Kyiv. He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 2002 as a candidate from Our Ukraine and served as the head of the Rada's Health Committee before being appointed health minister in February.

More information on UMANA is available on the website www.umana.org.

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