So anyways, the conference...As you've read from Jazmin's post, it was held at SFU. I agree completely with Jazmin's comments about the first day one of the key speakers, Dr. Julio Montaner. I always seem to have certain expectation with these events: they need to inspire me, make me think more about global health, and confirm all of the efforts I put forth for the cause that is global health. Myself, not being from a medical background, was certainly looking for a bit more than the data from his research in HAART. While I was definitely impressed, for me, it was a bit too one sided. It made me think about SUNSIH's own Western Regional Conference I'm helping plan. For me, one of my main goals for this conference is to avoid the emphasis of medicine. Global health is so much more than that. I found myself asking questions after his presentation: what was the impact on family dynamics? What were the economic implications of HAART? And, as Jazmin mentioned, what about access!? One thing that did strike me as a particularly good observation: Dr. Montaner acknowledged the success of HIV/AIDS, and the necessity to bring other diseases, like TB and Malaria up to the standards of HIV/AIDS. By that, he means that the world has given so much attention to the AIDS pandemic, that all of these other less "sexy" diseases get ignored by the world.
I wasn't able to see all of Dr. Samantha Nutt's key note address. The details are not particularly important, but I had to save my luggage from being locked in at the gym. I was incredibly disappointed to leave this plenary address, as even within the the first few minutes, I was engaged. She left me thinking about our role in Global Health: how we tend to think of it as "how we will help them" ( I mean to italicize the work "them", but the function isn't working for some reason). Dr. Nutt calls us to think about our role as practitioners in global health and to be aware of those dynamics. I think back to some of my anthropology courses, where we discussed the importance of recognizing the implication of assigning those you are offering aid, as "them." It creates a distance between those who are giving aid and those who are receiving it. The distance removes grounds for equality, mutual respect, and inclusiveness. This distance becomes exacerbated considering the history of colonialism. Dr. Nutt touched on this noted that sometimes, we provide the role of "band-aid." Which, according to Nutt, is "the incomplete apology for failures to behave more responsibly."
For the opening plenary on the second day, of particular interest to me was Dr. Michael Seear's lecture on the Historical Roots of the MDGs. Dr. Michael Seear is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at UBC and a Pediatric Respirologist at the Vancouver Children's Hospital. To sum up the basis of his discussion, he said "To work in the aid industry, you need to understand the history." What can we learn from our past mistakes? Dr. Seear's lecture addressed the MDGs as the developed world's third attempt to solve everything. As many of you know, the modern aid industry emerged from the social and scientific advances during WWII. Dr. Seear spoke about the developing world's first attempt: The Marshall Plan in 1947. I haven't even thought about this since grade 11. I couldn't even remember what it entailed. But get this- this was a good deal: the US was only a DONOR. There was NO tied aid. And, there was DEBT FORGIVENESS! This plan was implemented to the European countries, which as we know, got a pretty quick recovery. But what about the developing countries??? This makes me wonder how we can make such optimistic goals, such as "Health for All" by 2000 and the MDGs, if the world cannot make the commitment that's required. It's worked before...if only we could make it to that ODA projection of 0.7% of our GNI....
Anyways, more to come later...it's getting late and I fear I'm making less sense...
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