Capacity building: UHS to hold international seminar on disaster management

Hopes to devise strategies to provide preventive solutions on tropical diseases.

LAHORE:

The University of Health Sciences (UHS), in collaboration with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), will organise an international seminar on Role of Academia and Media in Human Disaster Management on January 26.

This was announced by Prof Arif Rashid Khawaja, the UHS Centre of Innovation in Learning and Teaching director, who said that the seminar aimed at bringing together policy makers, system providers, media and aid agencies to discuss the need for having an academic link to the management of human disasters.

“We believe there is a need to build capacity of individuals and organisations who are involved in managing disasters,” he said.

Prof Timothy O’Dempsy, the director of the Studies for Humanitarian Assistance Programmes at LSTM, will attend the seminar as a guest speaker. On the occasion, a formal agreement of cooperation will be signed between the UHS and LSTM to devise joint strategies for spreading awareness, providing cheap preventive solutions and encouraging research on tropical diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid, hepatitis, dengue, and malaria.

Representatives of the National Disaster Management Authority, the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, the Global Change Impact Studies Centre, Islamabad, and the Punjab Emergency Services (Rescue 1122), various non governmental organisations and media are expected to attend the seminar.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2012.