Proposing African Forum for Sharing and Networking

Last month I participated at the 38^th Global Health Council (GHC) in Washington DC, USA which took place during the week 14 – 18 June 2011 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. There were over 2000 registered participants from all over the world. Although the theme of the meeting was Non Communicable Diseases(NCD), there was a very wide range of topics addressed which ranged from health systems, NCDs, HIV and other infectious diseases, ICTs in health etc. The meeting was well organized and vibrant. It is believed to be the biggest global health annual gathering surpassing the World Health Assembly. The majority of the participants were USA health actors of all types. Clearly this is the meeting of the year for many of them.

I was one of the four Co Chairs for this year and the others included the regional WHO Director for the PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) equivalent of the Regional Director for WHO Afro., the President of the Public Health Foundation of India and the President of Harvard Global Equity Initiative. The meeting was also addressed by top leaders from the USA government. The Minister of Health of Liberia also spoke at the meeting as did another African global health leader Professor Osotimehin Babatunde, Executive Director of UNFPA and formerly Minister of Health in Nigeria.

I saw a lot of Africans at this meeting in two categories: Africans who came from Africa specifically for this meeting and Africans who live outside Africa in the USA, Canada and Europe. As one of the Co Chairs of this Global Health Council (GHC) I had a busy schedule including chairing sessions, participating in panels, sitting in at sessions of interest to me and taking interviews with the media and many informal net working sessions with very interesting individuals from round the world. I was struck by the African participants based in North America of whom were many young people yearning to return to Africa but with many interesting questions about how, where and what. I was also struck by the many African issues that were core items of the agenda for this meeting but are not being discussed at African fora. The question that I now have is: Where is the counterpart meeting of this type in Africa and for Africa? Do we need such a forum?

Such a meeting would not be in competition with the Annual WHO Regional Committee as the PAHO is part of this GHC, and not also in competition with the biennial African Union Health Ministers Conference as the USA government participates in the GHC. It is a meeting that can bring all actors together to put on show what is happening in African health, what solutions are working and need to be shared. It is purely technical and non political. Being an integral part of the globalized world we should also have active participation from the international community. The CEO of the Global Health Council, Jeffrey Sturchio, is an old colleague in global health and he mentioned that the GHC is considering rotating its meetings round the world including Africa. Apart from the sessions we would have with the GHC from time to time, we could have our own annual technical meetings. I know that there already many issue specific and smaller meetings taking place round the continent each year. I would like to argue that these could be consolidated to bring in topics on diabetes, nephrology, malaria, HIV, nutrition, surgery etc for the generalist practitioner into one big meeting each year either in one venue or different venues on the continent annually. Such a meeting could pay for itself through exhibiters, advertisers and modest participation fees. Is this something we should entertain? Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.