3 days and counting in Cairo (WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Committee Meeting)

Three days have passed and the journey is still on, 3 long days of discussions, talks and meetings.

Want to know what I’m talking about, just keep reading.

3 days ago, Lujain Al-Qodamani, Hatem Alaa, Mona Faramawy and Omar Safa attended the 58th Regional committee meeting of the WHO in Cairo having the responsibility of representing the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations and carrying the voice of Medical Students all over the world, such a responsibility that makes you try to do your best for the whole Federation that entrusted you with this.

In the 2nd day, Usman Mushtaq (coming from COP17 preparatory meeting) and Ahmed Adi (coming from TNT in Tunisia) joined us and that was when our powers was at its full.

In the second day, IFMSA had one intervention on the Technical Paper “Dengue: Call for urgent interventions for a rapidly expanding emerging Disease” the intervention was drafted and discussed in the few days before the meeting and it focused on relation between factors causing outbreaks of Dengue and the major problem of Climate Change and how we need to focus on, not only Combating the Virus by scaling up health systems, but also the underlying causes for the spread of the disease. During the intervention we urged all stakeholders to collaborate on fostering knowledge, changing attitudes and catalyzing actions to tackle the dengue related burden from its roots.

Third day has started normally at 8 am, the technical papers and discussions with the technical paper “Strategy for mental health and substance abuse in the eastern Mediterranean region 2012-2016”. Discussions were really interesting and we also had an intervention on this point focusing on the need to add more attention for Mental Health in Medical Curricula and more integration for Students and youth in this field. The intervention was quoted by the Regional Director in his own intervention on the same point as he was stressing on the point of teaching Mental Health issues.

The second technical discussion was about “Report of the 25th meeting of the Eastern Mediterranean Advisory Committee on Health Research” and how this can be used to improve health care service. On this point we also had a short intervention calling for inclusion of Health Care students in research and to add more focus on research in the field of Medical Education as a direct contributor to the quality of the health care.

Making contacts, building relations and presenting where IFMSA stands in discussions … that’s how it was for past 3 days and we are still on it.

Wish us luck;
From Cairo and on behalf of the whole delegation to this meeting

Omar Safa

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