Day 20(1/22/18) *Geneva*

Day 20! After the bus arrived in Geneva at 6am, I got back to the John Knox center, ate breakfast, and decided to sleep in an actual bed for a few hours before we heard from our speaker, Tony Burton. I figured it would do me good to stretch out a bit, and that was certainly correct:) 

For the remaining talks that we’ll see, Julie has requested that we use a new template for our reflections, so I’ll be doing that from now on in my journal! :)

Speaker: Tony Burton, WHO (data analysis, used to work at CDC)

Top 3 things to know:

1.The WHO began in 1851 in response to the Cholera pandemic. It began in Geneva, and the first director General(person in charge of carrying out the tasks appointed by the world health assembly) was a a Canadian(!)🍁 named Brock Chisholm. It has since grown into a group of ~8,000 employees worldwide!

2. The WHO and CDC don’t ever send healthcare to countries, and they never enter a country without having been sent a request from that country to do so. Their role is to provide surveillance on a disease/outbreak and to work with the country to help it establish its own system to protect the health of its citizens, including creating a system capable of providing healthcare. This is in large part due to the fact that there is a lack in funding (see the “something worrisome” section for my comment on funding!) However, other organisations do send healthcare (such as doctors without borders and save the children), just not the WHO, since their focus is on data collection to inform policies. All players are very important in this collective goal towards helping those who are in medical danger!

3. The WHO used to work in “international health”, but has since switched to working on “global health”. The difference is that international health focuses on the health policies of specific countries in need/experiencing epidemics, and that global health focuses on the health of the world as a whole, using more than just government to promote healthcare(it uses laws, policies, media, and non-governmental organizations, NGOs all together to promote world health). Most health-related organisations that I have heard of work in international health (such as doctors without borders, Catholic relief services, CARE, etc) , so it’s good that there’s an organisation that looks at how those organisations can best help the populations to which they’re sending aid on a more big-picture scale!

Something surprising:

• “A consistent challenge to public health is finding a way change people’s interpretations of a number of topics and to get everyone to be openminded to alternative interpretations…how can we best do that? Through the study of Art, Theatre, and Poetry!” I wrote down that quote from the presentation because while I do completely agree that it’s true, I was surprised to hear it from a professional who leads such a science-focused life, and even more surprised to hear that it’s a driving principle of the WHO. Yet another reason to support the arts:) 

Something worrisome:

• The annual budget for the WHO and its regional offices is $4.4 billion. This may seem like a lot, but Mr.Burton informed us that the New York City fire department has an annual budget of $2 billion, so in perspective, it’s not actually that much! The funding comes from member state contributions,  private donations, and USAID financial assistance, so to get that much money from individual sources is quite impressive. However, it is still worrisome to know that to work on the public health protection of the whole world the WHO has only double the annual budget of an organisation whose job it is to protect just one city!

Something hopeful:

• Mr.Burton informed us that currently across all of WHO, there’s a 3:1 ratio of female:male employees. This is hopeful to me because in Dr.Stein’s talk, she emphasised how difficult it is for women to be taken seriously in professional positions, so this push for female workers seems like a step in the right direction! However, it is very 

So after Mr.Burton’s talk, I was still quite tired from the overnight bus ride, so I went downtown and got some groceries for the next few days and I explored around a bit, but I’m gonna call it a night pretty early since I’m still quite tired! Tomorrow I’m excited to have a work day; I think the plan is to go to old town Geneva with Aidan and Olivia and work on things, which will be a great way to get to know another part of the city :) Jackie and Florian said that when they were in Geneva, they found a McDonald’s that was in Old town that had a great view of lake Geneva so perhaps we’ll look for that!

Goodnight,

-Anna