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SCORA, the Standing Committee on Reproductive health including AIDS, is one of the six Standing Committees of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) and IFMSA - Egypt.
SCORA is a forum for active discussion for medical students interested in promoting reproductive health. Our overall goal is the implementation of an optimal understanding of the reproductive health problems and their prevention by medical students.
In Egypt, SCORA started to work effectively more than 5 years ago and organizes many events for medical students, from different universities around Egypt to guide them on how to improve reproductive health issues in our country. SCORA work reached the maximum within the last 2 years. It is now well established in 13 medical schools in Egypt. This big number of participation allowed the increase in various topics & styles of this committee’s work.
Mission:Our mission is to offer Egypt’s future physicians a comprehensive introduction to reproductive health. Through education, we aim to raise awareness on a variety of reproductive health issues amongst the wide public, and strive to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and whilst challenging the widespread violation of reproductive rights and gender inequality. Activities:
Through SCORA, medical students across the globe work locally, nationally and internationally to increase awareness and health concerning reproductive health and related issues. We are all affected by reproductive health: women, men, children, adolescents, mothers and infants, fathers and families.
In IFMSA-Egypt, we are now working on 5 main axes; HIV and AIDS awareness, Maternal Health, Women Empowerment, Adolescent’s health and Reproductive Oncology. The UNAIDS, UNICEF. The National AIDS Program is always offering us great support to HIV and AIDS work, which is one of our top priority topics every year. Our methodologies in tackling reproductive health issues vary according to the nature of the topic & the target group.
Projects:
-World Aids Campaign - Peer Education Project - Reproductive Oncology - Women’s Day - Adolescent's care - Maternal Health project - SCORA X-change
World AIDS Campaign:
The Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies Egypt as a low HIV prevalence country with regard to the general population, with the 7,224 to 12,635 in 2008. Despite this low range, the exponential increase in the number of PLHIV in Egypt since 1985, the existence of high-risk behaviors and low level of HIV knowledge necessitate a firm and proactive stance.
Coming from this sense IFMSA-Egypt -and since 2004- has been participating in the World AIDS campaigns. Our aim in IFMSA-Egypt is to advocate among public and especially health professionals for improved access to quality care, support, and treatment for PLHIV, achieved through several campaigns either in our medical schools or in public places.
Peer Education Project:
With support from the UNICEF, the Medical Students Peer Education Project is currently being implemented by IFMSA – Egypt and the Egyptian Medical Women Association (EMWA). The goal is to create a core group of young medical professionals including medical students, newly graduating physicians and nurses capable of educating their peers in 10 medical schools and affiliated university hospitals in Egypt about HIV and AIDS related issues to influence behavior change.
Our target by the end of the project is to have 600 young medical professionals (including 540 medical students, and newly graduated doctors; and 60 nurses) from different medical schools throughout Egypt to have the capacity to educate their peers about various issues related to HIV/AIDS
- This project is divided into 2 phases: The Core Training, where medical students from each university receive a 6 day training to qualify them for the second phase of the project The roll out trainings, 25 trainings is being conducted across Egypt, to reach our goal of 600 young professionals.
Reproductive Oncology:
According to the World Cancer Report, the most common reproductive cancer sites in males are the prostate and testis, and in females, the breast, corpus and cervix uteri and ovaries. Looking at the statistics that compare most common cancer sites in the body to reproductive system cancer sites, it is evident that prostate cancer is the second cancer site overall (11%) in males and in females, breast (23%), uterine body (6%), followed by uterine cervix (4%).
In SCORA, we aim at emphasizing that treatment of cancer gives best results if detected at an early stage of development .We also try to focus more on prevention and on the fact that people do not take care of their health, especially reproductive health.
In IFMSA-Egypt we had several breast cancer awareness campaigns through the Breast Cancer Awareness Project, where we educated females about the importance of self examination in early detection of breast cancer.
Mr. and Ms. Breastestis :
Mr. and Ms. Breastestis is the newest project in SCORA in the field of reproductive oncology. It is an IFMSA Transnational project that we are currently carrying out with CroMSIC Croatia.
In this project, we assess medical students and public knowledge about several types of cancers of the reproductive system including Breasts, Prostate, Testes and Uterine Cervix Cancers. Through several campaigns we will be able to educate medical students and the public about these cancers.
International Women's Day (IWD):- Know your rights and live it right initiative: The international women's day or IWD was born on March 8 1975. It was born for the sake of women worldwide, as it is an occasion to review how far they have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development.
We aim at educating females' especially female students about different topics like healthy diets and lifestyles, her rights in the society, and her rights in education…
In IFMSA-Egypt, we have celebrated IWD 2007 by visiting more than 12 schools all over Egypt, and we educated female students about their rights. Adolescent's Care:
- Mutilation and its bad effects on females: Our aim through this project is to equip medical students and provide them with on the spot data to enhance their scientific, religious and legal knowledge and correct their misunderstanding about FGM. We hope through our project that we will be able to change their attitude towards FGM.
Currently, we are discussing the Pre-campaign survey analysis & training our members about the required health messages to be delivered to our target through our campaigns.
Maternal Health Project:
Through this project, we address females in the childbearing age, on how to prepare them for this stage including prenatal, peri-and postnatal care. We have educated mothers with the importance of breastfeeding in 12 hospitals all over Egypt.
SCORA X-Change 2009:
We intend to have a SCORA exchange program for 2009. Exchanges are usually on HIV treatment/testing, HIV and STI prevention strategies, legislation, epidemiology, HIV-research, ethics, "Children, AIDS and Medical Students" as well as lectures and seminars, and round table discussions... The program gives local and international participants a holistic view of HIV/AIDS, focusing on the complexity of this multifaceted issue. |
