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Introduction to the World Health Assembly: a Briefing for New Introduction to the World Health Assembly: A Briefing for New Delegates Organised by the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute and the United Nations Foundation in collaboration with the World Health Organization Biographies of Speakers 17 May 2015 Maison de la Paix The Graduate Institute, Geneva | 15:00 – 15:10 | WELCOME JOHN E. LANGE Ambassador; Senior Fellow for Global Health Diplomacy, United Nations Foundation Ambassador (Retired) John E. Lange is the Senior Fellow for Global Health Diplomacy at the United Nations Foundation in Washington, DC. He is one of the leaders of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in his capacity as co-chair of the Polio Partners Group. Lange worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2009-2013, where he engaged in high-level advocacy with governments to advance the foundation’s global health goals in Africa. Ambassador Lange had a distinguished 28-year career in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, where he was a pioneer in the field of global health diplomacy. He served as the Special Representative on Avian and Pandemic Influenza; Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the inception of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and U.S. Ambassador to Botswana (1999-2002), where HIV/AIDS was his signature issue. Lange headed the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as chargé d'affaires during the August 7, 1998, terrorist bombing. Earlier, he served at the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva and at U.S. Embassies in Lomé, Paris and Mexico City. Ambassador Lange is the author of a case study on pandemic influenza negotiations in the book “Negotiating and Navigating Global Health: Case Studies in Global Health Diplomacy” (2012). He has delivered numerous lectures on issues related to global health diplomacy and writes a blog on global health in “The Huffington Post”. In 2014, the President of the U.S. Institute of Medicine appointed Lange to co-chair of the IOM Committee on Investing in Health Systems in Low and Middle-Income Countries and to be a member of the IOM Forum on Public-Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety. | 15:10 – 15:15 | EVENT OBJECTIVES AND OVERVIEW ILONA KICKBUSCH Director, Global Health Programme, the Graduate Institute Professor Ilona Kickbusch is recognised throughout the world for her contribution to health promotion and global health. She is currently adjunct professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva and director of the Global Health Programme. She advises organisations, government agencies and the private sector on policies and strategies to promote health at the national, European and international level. She has published widely and is a member of a number of advisory boards in both the academic and health policy arenas. Professor Kickbusch has received many awards and served as the Adelaide Thinker in Residence at the invitation of the Premier of South Australia. She has launched a think- tank initiative “Global Health Europe: A Platform for European Engagement in Global Health” and the “Consortium for Global Health Diplomacy”. Her key areas of interest are global health governance, global health diplomacy, health in all policies, the health society, and health literacy. She has had a distinguished career with the World Health Organization, at both the regional and global levels, where she initiated the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and a range of “settings projects” including Healthy Cities. From 1998 – 2003, she joined Yale University as the head of the global health division, where she contributed to shaping the field of global health and headed a major Fulbright programme. She is a political scientist with a PhD from the University of Konstanz, Germany. 1 | 15:15 – 15:30 | WHA MANDATE, STRUCTURE AND PROCEDURES JAKOB QUIRIN Associate Legal Officer, Office of the Legal Counsel, World Health Organization Jakob Quirin is an Associate Legal Officer in the WHO Office of the Legal Counsel. His work there focuses on WHO’s international legal relations and on WHO’s governing bodies. He studied law at universities in Germany and Estonia, has a degree in law from the University of Cambridge and trained at several institutions, including the European Court of Justice and the German Constitutional Court. He occasionally publishes on topics at the intersection of global public health and international law. | 15:30 – 16:10 | PREPARING FOR WHA – PERSPECTIVES FROM COUNTRY DELEGATIONS ZAMIR AKRAM Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva Ambassador Zamir Akram has been Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN and other International Organizations in Geneva since 2008. He joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1978 and has served in the (former) Soviet Union, India, the United States (twice) and the United Nations (twice). At Headquarters he has dealt with the Afghanistan, South Asia and UN Divisions. Ambassador Akram has also served as Additional Foreign Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office where he was responsible for Pakistan’s Foreign, Security, Economic, Energy, Health and Education policies. He also played a central role in the coordination of international assistance during the 2005 earthquake. Ambassador Akram holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. TOM MBOYA OKEYO Ambassador; Director, Health Services, Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Kenya Ambassador Dr. Tom Mboya Okeyo, a medical Doctor and public health specialist, is Fellow of the World Health Organization and former Ambassador to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. While in Geneva, Amb. Dr. Okeyo served as Ambassador / Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kenya to the United Nations, the Conference on Disarmament and the WTO from 2010-2013, Ambassador / Deputy Permanent Representative from 2007-2010 and Minister Counselor from 2006-2007. During his appointments, he was elected Chairman of the WTO Council for Trade in Goods, President of the UNCTAD Trade and Investment Commission, Coordinator of the African Group to the WHO, UNAIDS, WTO and the G15 Summit Level Group of Developing Countries as well as Coordinator of the Conference on Disarmament G21. 2 Amb. Dr. Okeyo has published several books on SARS, Social Health Insurance, and Quality Management in healthcare, as well as several publications on innovative health financing. He has served as a part-time lecturer on Quality Management at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. His latest publications have focused on establishing the African Network on Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI) which are published in the Lancet in 2009 and IPOS-Medicine Journal in 2010. He chaired the ANDI Task Force composed of leading African Scientific Organizations, The African Scientists in Diaspora, The African Development Bank, the World Health Organization, the Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the European Commission, which resulted in the establishment of the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI) in 2010, jointly managed by WHO and UNECA. Amb. Dr. Okeyo is a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and was elected President of the African Group of Ambassadors. | 16:10 – 16:30 | COFFEE BREAK | 16:30 – 18:00 | 68TH WORLD HEALTH ASSEMBLY: WHAT IS AT STAKE GOVERNANCE: FRAMEWORK OF ENGAGEMENT WITH NON-STATE ACTORS GAUDENZ SILBERSCHMIDT Director for Partnerships and Non-State Actors, Director-General’s Office (DGO), World Health Organization Gaudenz Silberschmidt advised since October 2012 the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) on reform issues. He was appointed Director for Partnerships and Non-State Actors in February 2015 and is currently responsible for WHO’s engagement with non-State actors and partnerships and acts as Director ai for Coordinated Resource Mobilization. Before joining WHO he headed as Ambassador the International Affairs Division of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. He represented Switzerland as member of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO), where he also chaired several negotiations during the World Health Assembly, and is a former member of the bureau of the OECD health committee. He initiated the OECD / WHO reviews of the Swiss health system, led the elaboration of the Swiss Health Foreign Policy, and is leading the negotiations toward a health agreement between Switzerland and the European Union. He received his medical degree from the University of Zurich; holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of St. Gallen and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Public Health of the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel. For the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute he chaired the external advisory group and regularly teaches and directs global health diplomacy courses in Geneva, Beijing, Nairobi, Jakarta and Cairo. 3 GOVERNANCE: BUILDING WHO’S CAPACITY TO RESPOND TO FUTURE OUTBREAKS KATHERINE DELAND Chief of Staff, Ebola Response, World Health Organization As the Chief of Staff of WHO's Ebola Response, Katherine has had the privilege of working closely with the Special Representative of the Director-General for Ebola Response and Assistant Director- General for Emergencies, the Governments of and WHO Country Offices in Guinea, Liberia, Mali and Sierra Leone, the United Nations Mission on Emergency Ebola Response, a diversity of UN programmes, funds and agencies, NGOs and epidemiologists, case finders, contact tracers and social mobilizers in the field to help drive the efforts to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Following the January 2015 Special Session of WHO’s Executive Board, her role has been combined with working with the Director-General’s Office on examining WHO’s response to the outbreak and the process of capacitating the Organization to better fulfil its Constitutional mandate in emergency response.
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