Geneva World Health Assembly Update – Part 1 (By Robert Doble)

Big hello from Geneva and the World Health Assembly! I’m a PhD student from the UK and at the World Health Assembly (WHA) with UAEM, learning how these big global health decisions get made and helping out Bryan Collinsworth (UAEM Executive Director)  and Rachel Kiddell-Monroe (UAEM President). I'm going to try and send some daily updates in the hope that it will feel like you’re here with us but from the comfort of your own home (or maybe more likely from the library trying to finish a paper or prepare for an exam).

Before I give a quick run-down of what we've been up to, do take a quick look at the WHO website link where you can see videos of the speeches and link to the official WHA documents:            http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/2011/wha64/en/index.html

So it's Tuesday afternoon and we have had two days of the assembly. It is a vast beast of a meeting - lots of delegates and big complex issues to address. They divide this up with a big plenary meeting room where the speeches and big discussions happen and where NGOs can watch from the eaves, combined with smaller more detail-focused meetings of two Committees (A generally deals with technical issues and B with finance and budget issues). I won't profess to know 100% of what is happening and how progress is going as it can be difficult to have a clear sense of that but it is clear that the two main issues which are so far and will likely continue to dominate the agenda are 1) Non-communicable diseases, and 2) WHO financing and reform.

Yesterday we heard Margaret Chan's speech where she outlined how collaboration amongst all the different actors in public health has been key but she stressed how WHO has been an important actor shaping the global health agenda - in particular with the technical expertise it provides. She said the reform of the WHO is essential and that it will undergo the most extensive reforms in its history. Her vision for WHO was an organization that encourages all partners working on health to speak with a coherent voice (we're not sure exactly what that means), supporting countries to be self-reliant (giving a hand-up not a hand-out), continuing an extensive focus on unmet health needs in Africa, and working with non-health sectors to address health risks. The real substance of the reforms will happen in committee meetings over the week.

The rest of the day was spent listening to the NCD discussion in the main plenary meeting and then attending some side-events in the evening on NCDs. I'm not an NCD expert but thankfully others in UAEM are, such as Sandeep Kishore who went to the recent Moscow ministerial conference on NCDs and the wonderful UAEMers who emailed me yesterday. It is fascinating how this one issue has been on the tip of everyone's tongues here at the WHA - just goes to show how political windows of opportunity can galvanize action on issues. For the details on WHO's 2008-13 Global Strategy on NCDs see: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241597418_eng.pdf

In terms of UAEM's work here, we attended a Lancet/NCD Alliance side-event and Rachel raised the concern that access to treatment for NCDs is not sufficiently being considered - to which there was no response from the panel unfortunately. UAEM has produced a joint press release with 5 other NGOs from the Moscow summit which can be found here: http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/ncd-6healthngos-moscow.pdf). This release has 3 key recommendations (safeguarding generic production, supporting quality assurance, and incentivizing R&D) so we've been focusing on getting these included in the relevant WHO discussions and resolutions. You might also be interested to read a recent paper published by the Medicine Prices team at Health Action International about medicines prices for chronic and acute conditions in developing countries at: http://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/10-084327.pdf

I also know the issue of why mental health has been excluded in the WHO's 4x4 strategy is important to many of you - this question was raised by an NGO alliance called the NGO forum for health at this side-event. The response from the lancet and staff from WHO was that mental health is a key priority but that the process of NCDs at the moment is a political one and the first step in the process at the global level on tackling NCDs and therefore need to focus on limited number of political asks and then build on this in the future.

Tomorrow I'll send an update on how today went - which includes Bill Gates' speech.