Capacity building: Health diplomacy course begins

Capacity building programme shed light on facets of evolving field


Our Correspondent September 05, 2016
Capacity building programme shed light on facets of evolving field. PHOTO: APP

ISLAMABAD: For the first time in Pakistan, an ongoing five-day capacity building course on health diplomacy is being held.

The course has been organised by the Health Services Academy (HSA) and the Ministry of National Health Services, and Regulation and Coordination (NHSRC). They are working in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The duration of the course is from September 5th to September 9th.

The various topics which will be covered during the course include macroeconomics and health, negotiating for health, sustainable development goals, health governance and reforms, diplomacy for population matters, global health security, and human rights and health.

The capacity-building course has seen participants from provincial as well as the federal health departments, the development sector, donors, non-governmental organisations, civil society and academia.

The core objectives of the course are to dissect the aspects of global health diplomacy.

This encompasses the challenges to development along with identifying key concepts in global health.

Moreover, the facets of global health diplomacy, as well as global health governance, will also be touched upon.

Key issues of global health correlated to foreign policy, trade, climate change, and human rights will also be explicated.

Lectures will be given by NHSRC Secretary Muhammad Ayub Sheikh, NHSRC Secretary Economic Affairs Division Tariq Bajwa, WHO Pakistan representative Michel Thieren, and HSA Executive-Director Assad Hafeez.

The speakers lauded the endeavour of the HSA in designing and offering this imperative course at this juncture when the country is working towards sustainable development goals.

Hafeez said that the notion of health had evolved with time with modernisation.

The field had become a global and interdependent phenomenon with additional cross-border concerns, international agreements, financial implications and ethical dimensions, the executive-director said.

He said that with that paradigm shift, the nature and range of stakeholders had also changed and re-molded.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6th, 2016.

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