Multi-sectoral partnerships and conflicts of interest are a resounding theme of this year’s World Health Assembly, as the World Health Organization (WHO) struggles to compete to raise funds with NGOs and other multilateral organizations in the midst of a global financial crisis.  The multi-sectoral perspective strays from the conventional “top-down, finger-wagging UN” and is not a natural or comfortable one for health ministries to adopt. It begs the question: what place do partisan…

This session focused on implications for individuals, health systems, and society as a whole in regards to the rapidly aging population. It is well known that as people age, they not only develop co-morbidities, but multiple morbidities. Thus, it is essential to consider how to provide increased care to the aging population and keep members in the workforce as long as possible. The panelists proposed a three-prong approach to sustaining the lives of the elderly. These include: creating…

After an entire week of attending plenaries, committee meetings, side events, and creepily eavesdropping on other people’s conversations at the coffee bar, I’ve come to one conclusion.  The World Health Assembly is one huge ball.  Countries are constantly waltzing around each other and bowing to each other, but never really getting to the meat of things.

This week, I had the chance to attend the Committee A meetings on WHO reform.  Each country was given the opportunity to make a…

To coincide with the YP Day of Action the May 3T was shifted for one week and was held on the 4^th Thursday. As always the meeting was filled with 26 young and energetic YP’s around the Dhaka city. Three new members - Dr. Jakir Hossain Bhuiyan Masud, Mehedi Hassan Fuad and Tashdidaa Shamsi – joined this meeting for the first time. At the beginning of the 4^th 3T, Shusmita Khan welcomed everyone and gave an update on the global events including the 65^th World…

The first week of our practicum trip to Geneva has flown by in a flurry of activity - coffee breaks with United Nations officials in the bustling Serpentine lounge, frantic note-writing in plenary sessions, delegate speeches from all over the world (as I listen in real-time translation through those highly-coveted UN headphones), and a plethora of top secret things that I simply can't recount in such a public forum. I can speak for myself when I say that after five days of hobnobbing with…

Our morning meeting and interview with Alison Cox, strategic planning consultant for the NCD Alliance, was inspiring and quite thought-provoking. She told us a little about how the NCD Alliance began and what its top priorities are for global health advocacy. As we have seen and heard already at the World Health Assembly all this week, non-communicable diseases have become a leading global health epidemic and they need to be treated as top priorities much like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB…