AMREF Wins Gates Award for Global Health
 The 2005 Gates Award for Global Health recipient is The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF). Gates Foundation Co-chair Bill Gates Sr. presented the award, which carries with it a $1 million honorarium, at last night’s Annual Awards Banquet.
Founded in 1957, AMREF’s mission is to improve the health of disadvantaged people in Africa as a means for them to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with offices throughout the continent, AMREF’s efforts focus on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, malaria, safe water and environmental sanitation, family health, clinical outreach, disaster management and emergency and response, and training and development of health learning materials.
To achieve its mission, AMREF implements its projects through and across its country programs, learning from those projects and using the information and knowledge gained to inform and influence others. AMREF emphasizes developing, testing and evaluating methodologies, best practices and systems that are appropriate, relevant, affordable and effective.
The award was accepted by Dr. Miriam Were, Board Chair of AMREF.
LATE BREAKING SESSION
2-4 pm
Post-Tsunami Systems: What Worked, What Did Not
Palladian Ballroom (map)
The tsunami that slammed the coastlines of southeastern Asia and eastern Africa on Dec. 26, 2004 was the worst natural disaster in many decades, with more than 170,000 deaths, entire villages destroyed, and hundred of thousands of displaced persons. The enormity of the losses and devastation, and the complexity of working across two continents presented significant challenges to the relief and recovery efforts. Join humanitarian aid workers who were in the tsunami-affected areas and/or “first on the scene” to discuss what systems were put in place to meet the acute and long-term relief and recovery efforts, and what worked and what did not.
Moderator: Howard Roy Williams, Center for Humanitarian Cooperation
Presenters:
Richard Brennan, International Rescue Committee
Lucy Mize, Independent Public Health Consultant, working in Aceh
Stephen Tomlin, International Medical Corps
SPECIAL SESSIONS
8:30-10 am
From Trained Birth Attendants to Skilled Attendance: Creating an Enabling Environment
Regency Ballroom (map)
One problem with the historic focus on use of "trained attendants" for maternal mortality reduction was pursuit of their promise of broad coverage, while failing to recognize their limited ability to directly treat the major causes of maternal death. A larger related problem has been the failure to consider the broader service delivery context in which any attendants, from those trained in the field to university educated OB/GYNs, have to work. Even the most highly skilled clinical attendants cannot fulfill their potential to prevent maternal deaths without the physical, logistic and managerial support of an enabled environment. This panel explores how the transition from trained birth attendants under the "risk approach" to skilled birth attendance, as supported by the Millennium Development Goals, presents both challenges and opportunities for increasing coverage while meeting the new standard of quality for obstetric care in developing countries.
10:30 am-12:30 pm
A Failure of Leadership: The "Governance" Factor in Health System Collapse
Palladian Ballroom (map)
How can the response to critical health needs, and the intervention of international financing mechanisms, be efficient and effective in settings where the government is not? What is the appropriate role of the international community in reform efforts, and how does political instability influence donor decision-making? This session will focus on a dialogue about what can be or should be done when governments are not providing the leadership necessary to target resources to the critical health needs of its citizens.
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TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
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