Date: 2017-10-18 09:35:33 ID: 1733
From 15 to 17 October, a WAHO delegation comprising the Director General, Dr Xavier CRESPIN, and the Officer in charge of the ECOWAS Regional Reproductive Health and HIV Prevention Programme, Dr Clétus ADOHINZIN took part, in Berlin, in the 9th edition of World Health Summit, which was under the patronage of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.
This summit brings together in Berlin, each year since 2009, more than 2000 representative with international repute from academic institutions, public health, politicians, civil society and the pharmaceutical industry.
Statements from many personalities marked the opening ceremony, including those of:
Dr Hermann Gröhe, German Federal Ministry of Health; Dr Adalberto Campos Fernandes, Minister of health of Portugal; Hélène Boisjoly, Professor Agrégée from the University of Montréal, Canada; Detlev Ganten, Professor Agrégé from the University de Berlin, Germany; Joanne Liu, President of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) ; Roger Kornberg, Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, 2006.
Present at the ceremony was, Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, Minister of Health of Ghana.
The World Health Summit offers a singular opportunity to participants to get informed and discuss the current global health challenges in order to foster the development of new solutions to current health problems.
After the opening of deliberations the WAHO delegation took part in several panel discussions on themes as varied as the strengthening of health systems; the ONE HEALTH approach; Global health security; research and innovation; technological innovations in health; sustainable development goals; etc.
On the margins of the World Health Summit, the Director General of the West Africa Health Organisation, on Tuesday 17 October 2017, held a working session with a team from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation comprising Aparajita Ramakrishnan, Deputy Director, and Dr Joseph Fitchett, Programme Officer. This meeting enabled representatives of the two institutions to discuss the way forward for the project dubbed “Investment in youth engagement and family planning for adolescent sexual and reproductive health in ECOWAS region”. This project will strengthen the interventions WAHO and its partners have already undertaken in the area of sexual and reproductive health.