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Vancouver World Congress The Federation’s biennial World Congress took place in Vancouver, Canada on 22-27 July 2001. This was a meeting place for overlapping interests, attended by 1,200 people from over 60 countries. Chunilal Roy was chair of the organizing committee. Many viewpoints were represented and many topics addressed in the program, while the spacious setting of the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center permitted numerous groups to arrange informal gatherings. In addition, other formal meetings were held before, during and after the main conference (and some demonstrations as well). WFMH Board meetings were held before and after the Congress. The Canadian Mental Health Association arranged its 81st Annual Meeting in conjunction with it, and also brought participants in its African program to Vancouver for a training session. The World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry held a meeting on 20-21 July. A small international meeting of Ministers of Health and their representatives took place on 23 July, chaired by Gulzar Cheema, British Columbia’s new Minister of State for Mental Health. This group, with government speakers from Burkina Faso, Canada, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, the People’s Republic of China and the United Kingdom, described very wide variations in medical care. Despite the different level of economic advancement, however, there was a running theme of inadequacies in provisions for mental health
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