SEA/RC65/16 - Progress reports on selected Regional Committee resolutions:Capacity building of Member States in global health (SEA/RC63/R6)

Abstract

The term “global health” has emerged as part of the larger political and historical process and has replaced the term “international health”. The term is associated with the growing importance of actors beyond governments, intergovernmental organizations and agencies, and international nongovernmental agencies, etc. In order to strengthen the capacity of Member States in global health, many international training programmes on global health have been initiated to train health professionals through multidisciplinary, didactic and experiential learning. There is a need to provide support to Member States to organize national, regional and global seminars and training workshops on global health that could act as effective tools for strengthening national capacity in global health, and enable them to participate and play active roles in international/global health forums with improved negotiation skills. A joint collaboration among the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand, WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, the Thai Health Global Link Initiative Programme, (‎TGLIP)‎ and the Rockefeller Foundation resulted in organizing a series of training programmes on Global Health in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The High-Level Preparatory Meeting (‎HLP)‎ held in the Regional Office in New Delhi from 2 to 5 July 2012 reviewed the working paper and made the following recommendations: Action by Member States (‎1)‎ To engage actively in capacity building in global health. Actions by WHO/SEARO (‎1)‎ To convene a workshop in order to review the capacity building programmes in global health in South-East Asia, including curricula, training modalities and outcomes, to identify progress, achievement, strengths and weaknesses and to propose a plan for improvement. (‎2)‎ To continue to support and strengthen regional global health training workshops based on specific country needs, and the outcome of the above review. (‎3)‎ To identify potential training institutes and support a “training of trainers” programme in Member States. The working paper and the HLP recommendations are submitted to the Sixty-fifth Session of the Regional Committee for its consideration.