Well I’m writing this coming back from the Canadian Conference on Global Health in Ottawa. And what an interesting conference it’s been. We’ve been broadcasting Global Health TV at the event and have been lucky enough to meet some great people there.

Obviously lots of topics to get our teeth into. For the event we produced films from all around the world and in Ottawa we managed to interview government officials and NGO’s from several countries. And being the first major conference after September’s UN review on the millennium goals lots of soul searching into progress fighting the major diseases.

But two issues really captured my attention in Ottawa. I was particularly struck by the focus on equity. Now many of you will know that the Canadian Society on International Health – the organizers of this week’s event – already work very closely on this issue with the World Health Organisation.

But for me it was a new way of looking at things. When you consider progress on fighting a disease – HIV/AIDS for example – or look at health provision in a particular country, don’t focus on the average. Don’t ask yourself are we saving more lives or raising living standards, ask yourself what we’re doing for the poorest 10% in that society. Because the truth is that even whilst we’re making progress overall it is often the poorest and most vulnerable we’re letting down.

I was also taken by the focus on, and passion for, Pathways to Global Health. There was a recognition at the conference that in many ways Global Health as a discipline is driven by the passion of students. And whilst this is a good thing if the young people aren’t able to chart a route through they’ll become disillusioned and give up. So a new focus has been placed on helping students to plot their course towards a successful career and to agree a set of protocols to enable them to work effectively overseas.

So lots of enthusiasm and a passion to get things done. And perhaps even more impressive a specific set of goals for next year’s meeting. See you in Montreal!

When the average American watches the evening news there is precious little international coverage. And you can bet that what there is pays scant regard to the millions of lives affected each year in the world’s poorest countries by disease and malnutrition.

And it’s the same when it comes to newspapers. Throughout the United States thousands of editorial jobs have been lost, budgets cut and revenue restricted which has led to a narrowing of coverage. And this means less room for stories about the world’s poor who after all don’t vote and don’t buy advertising.

And here lies the paradox. Because the United States is also responsible for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on fighting these killer diseases in the developing world. The Government through its various aid projects and wealthy private sector organizations such as the Gates Foundation.

So how do we square this circle? There is clearly both the interest and the money to fight disease but no place for coverage in traditional media. Part of the answer here lies in new technology. Take Global Health TV as an example. The channel tackles many of the issues talked about here and is funded via several initiatives. But even so being a web based channel it suffers from the normal competition driving traffic to its site.

So enter the EdgePlayer. Global Health TV has transformed its reach by putting video players on high profile sites whilst retaining control of the content played on them. Take a look at thelancet.com and globalhealthcouncil.org as examples. And the result is over 100, 000 people each month tuning into coverage on global health. And given the problems we have to deal with that coverage is invaluable.

I’m writing this from the departure gate at Johannesburg where we are waiting for our Air Malawi fight. We’ve had to come to the gate by 11 for our 12.15 flight because apparently the pilot may decide to leave at 11.15 instead! We’re only fractionally concerned that no one else seems to be on our flight , they obviously know something we don’t as the equivalent SAA flight is full.

So its our big transfer day and we were up before sunrise and not sorry to leave the B+B behind. We found the airport without getting lost at all and Gerald was delighted to finally get us into a Wimpy for our breakfast.

So far our first flight has gone without hitch, and now we have just been called to our Malawi flight so I will continue this when we arrive there….

Moni – Hello! Here we are, we arrived to a very green airport, and got through immigration without a hitch. The plane as it turned out was quite full and we have learnt why we were called so early – to encourage people not to be late. But that seems to have had limited success as we were still boarding stragglers after our departure time – good old African Time again.

After a few interesting moments at the car hire and Liz getting an enormous wodge of local currency we hit the road and arrived at our hotel. Lilongwe on first site appears to be very green and very spacious. We passed a wide variety of transport on the short journey, many people on foot of course, but many people on bikes carrying incredible loads like small trees and huge logs, they weave around under the heavy loads and so we gave them a wide birth, there are also old trucks spitting out black smoke, laden with all manner of freight in huge volumes.

The hotel itself is nice and Gerald, Alex and I went for a very very brief and cold dip in the pool last night, it was certainly refreshing.

We then met up with the Global Health contingent out here, Laura, Todd and Maurice. We all dined together on brai at the hotel, it was delicious but needless to say it didn’t compare with Gerald’s.

Before bedtime Alex hosted a mini screening of the messages which the Global Health team was really delighted with. Then finally to bed for a well earned rest.

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