Key points from Save the Children and the GAVI Civil Society Constituency’s statement to the World Health Organization Executive Board on the draft of the Global Vaccine Action Plan.
I am in Geneva this week attending the World Health Organisation’s Executive Board meeting. Today I had the opportunity to make a statement in front of government officials from around the world and the WHO’s Director-General, which was nerve-wracking!
A major – perhaps the major – agenda item at this year’s World Health Assembly has been the future financing of the World Health Organisation (WHO). There is little doubt that WHO is in need of reform, as it is facing a financial crisis, but also one of identity and legitimacy.
Back in January, I wrote about a commission of policy makers and health experts created to implement a new global strategy to improve women and children’s health. Over the past six months the Commission on Information and Accountability has been working hard to develop a mechanism to ensure that the strategy is not only implemented but has a real impact on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable women and children.
At the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Margaret Chan has spoken about the right to health and called on delegates to “Remember the people”.
This week I am part of a small delegation of Save the Children staff attending the World Health Assembly in Geneva. The WHA is attended by delegations from more than 190 countries and meets each year to determine the policies of the World Health Organisation.
I am at the 128th annual meeting of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Executive Board in Geneva, which sets the agenda for the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May, and just presented a statement during the session on health system strengthening, based on the reports prepared by the Secretariat. It was very exciting to be given the opportunity to speak on behalf of Save the Children UK to such a senior audience, including the Director General of the WHO!
I was in Democratic Republic of Congo recently and met a young man, Jean Claude (not his real name), who is living with HIV. We are starting a new programme in DRC that’s responding to HIV, and I was very keen to have people living with HIV involved right from the beginning, so we invited some people who are open about their HIV status to join us for our start-up workshop.
Really difficult day today. We visited one of the slums of Mumbai, Shivaji Nagar. It is built on a rubbish tip. And as the rubbish settles, so people build homes on it, very higgledy piggly with no planning, and so it grows, and the waste of Mumbai is dumped further out.
Today, we are in Mumbai – by the way, Indians still call it Bombay, its only the English and officials who use its new name. Had a short flight from Jaipur to here early in the morning, and after a quick catnap and lunch, we were off once more.
