The past two days (and one to come) will be filled with the Pacific Health Summit 2010 which is, with a touch of irony, being held in London. The focus of the Summit is Maternal, Newborn and Child Health...hence there are more women than at any previous Summit. Strolling accross Westminster Bridge with a pal, we mused about the experience...which has been quite engaging, informative and thought provoking. Three reasons why this could be so 1) its away from our respective "home courts" i.e. an away game where one can really listen and ponder and occasionally speak without the incessant urgencies of the OFFICE 2) more women 3) Fascinating complex problem (however they all have been). The risk (NOTE HERE RISK), we agreed,is of creating yet another global meeting was creating a global elite of Very Important People who trot all over spewing CO2 (Margaret Chan's words on non productive work at her agency...taken out of context here) and never touching the ground.However, this has been going on increasingly over the last decade and may, in fact, be a long lost cause in the sociology of Global Health.
Another reason for the success of this summit is likely that one has to PAY FOR INTERNET at One George...which means that the screens are down.
So what has gone on? Lots of good talk. This blog is to share that with a wider audience. The Summit in its continuously morphing identity brings corporate and public health interests into a common forum...it is self consciously "high level" i.e. the more CEOs the better...and there is a sprinkling of academics and some heavy hitting Foundations.
Themes (not the agenda) included 1) the tension between the bottom line, dedicating corporations to lines of product for women and children (ultrasounds and nappies for example) and the broader issues of "health" ...This is an endlessly fascinating discussion because in fact each one of us lives on earth...however in "developed" countries some of us live two lives--one at work and one in our citizen/home life. Thus what is easily done at the church collection plate, or the mosque or the donation bin in our "private" assessment of what one should do seems not to be easily translated into our "work" or "business" lives...a curiosity.
2) The tension between rhetoric and action, always a part of such gatherings, worthy of hand wringing but only really requires follow up observations 3) Innovations from Business, partnerships and community advocacy.
Most of the business at the Summit will be done off line--through private meetings, gathering of the blessed and currently fortunately placed. Transparency is not yet a by word of how we as a community discuss what really gets done. There is still alot of trust building going on--an eagerness of public health types to be seen as "discrete" with information and an eagerness for the corporate types to have limited personal identification with what the deals are.Really not sure why this privilege and privacy have become so central in the global health space---but it certainly has. Perhaps its a wave of new enthusiasts who do not want to be put off their game by challenges ?
So the question for today, children, is to what extent does the "global agenda" of "top policymaker" meetings i.e. the H6 (or 7 or whatever), the Davos meetings, the G8 the G20, etc perpetuating the privilege of royalty epitomized by this evening's reception at Buckingham Palace? (If you cannot decode the acronyms here you definitely will not be invited). How mystical is this to the poorest of the poor? Does it become like numisticism or zodiac?
On the broader and possibly more pertinent front: Global Health has become the flavor of the month FINALLY...after many of us toiled for decades to work collaboratively with poor populations and countries to build humane and healthgiving capacity together. Once the money came in (in boatloads with PEPFAR and Gates) the captains of industry (and academia) moved in...i.e. if its important it must be THEIR game. As a small non important cog in this wheel, I find the new reality dizzying and disconcerting. And I keep looking for the folks from poor countries at places like this...Nigeria, Thailand, India, Brazil, Mexico --these are not really poor countries....where are the left behinds? Left behind? OK to be fair, Bangladesh is here, China is here...but the poorest of the poor with the most maternal deaths? Comments are welcome on this tripe.
Signing off...Santepourtous
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