WMA Archives

The WMA Archives preserves the organisation’s memory and provides access to it.

The tasks and activities underlying the WMA Archives consist of organizing, storing and maintaining the material containing the official information about:

• the WMA’s foundations, including its mission, governance, organisation, structure;
• the key actors of the WMA: leaders, members and partner organisations, and their involvement and achievements;
• the discussions and outputs of working group activities, as reported at statutory meetings;
• the discussions and the decisions taken at the statutory meetings.

This material comprises:

• the foundation documents of the organisation (e.g., Standing documents);
• official documents discussed and produced during the Statutory Meetings (i.e. Working Documents of the Council Sessions and the General Assemblies);
• successive versions of declarations, policies, statements for follow-up, revision or archiving.

Properly stored and preserved in the long-term, this material offers unique insights into the organisation’s history since its creation in 1947. It provides the reference material for monitoring the evolution of WMA’s structure and organisation, and for preserving the memory of its activities and accomplishments.

It is considered of public interest and can be shared with WMA members, other organisations, researchers and individuals upon request for research purposes.

Content details

The Archive documents cover the period from 1947 to the present day.

The documents from 1947 to 1990 were originally produced only in paper form. These have now been scanned and are thus also available in digital form. From 1990 onwards, documents have been progressively generated using editing software rather than typewriters. Since the end of this transition period, all documents are digital natives.

The WMA Archives are enriched and updated on an ongoing basis. They are completed after each statutory meeting by processing and integrating the meeting documents as soon as possible after the end of the meeting.

User requests

The few examples of requests below illustrate the potential value of the Archives material for member organisations, researchers, the WMA Secretariat and individuals.

• Contribution of the Japan Medical Association to the Declaration of Tokyo
• Date of first membership of BMA
• Date and reasons of resignation of the Sindicato Médico del Uruguay; reapplication date
• Minutes of the 2007 and 2011 General Assemblies
• Documents related to the preparatory work or to the development of the Taipei Declaration
• Working documents about the 1975 and 2000 revisions of the Declaration of Helsinki
• WMA statement about the choice of the caduceus as the official symbol of medicine

Adoption of the medical emblem for protection of medical workers in January 1957.

• First talk by Eugène Marquis as the President of WMA
• List of WMA legal advisers before 1995
• Reports of the Associate Members meetings
• All information about the creation of the Environment Caucus
• Information about the move of WMA headquarters to Ferney-Voltaire
• Exact date of WHPA Foundation
• Name of the WMA President in 1956
• Information about the visit by Dr. Robert Salter to a hospital in Chissamba, Angola (part of a tour of a Canadian mission in Africa)
• Exact dates of the assignment of Henri Anrys as a legal adviser of WMA
• All information about the activities of A.J.F. Jonchères at WMA in the 1960s

The First Open Expert Meeting on the Revision of the Declaration of Taipei (DoT), 4-5 December 2025: cover page of the program.

Internal research and analysis

In 2022, the background information on the history pages of the WMA website was reviewed and updated. The information stated there was checked, amended and completed by referring to historical Archives documents.

The membership dates (entry and resignation dates) of the national member associations were also recorded. These records were used to produce the chart showing the evolution of the number of members over time, which is published at the end of this section. The records and the chart are now updated regularly.

List of members of the Association in August 1947.

First annual meeting of the General Assembly, 17-20 September 1947: Minutes of the meeting (cover page).

First annual meeting of the General Assembly, 17-20 September 1947: Group picture of the participants.

Contact for information

Further information about the WMA Archives and its material can be obtained by email at: archive @ wma.net

Note on WMJ issues

In addition to the WMA Archives material, electronic issues of the WMJ from 2004 are also available on this page of the WMA website. Requests for access to excerpts or specific articles (e.g., title, author(s), date and issue) from issues before 2004 can be sent to the WMA Archives at archive @ wma.net