A seat at the table...

It was a very special week at the WHO Western-Pacific Regional Office.  Luck would have it that I am conducting research on R&D for neglected diseases in the same office hosting a meeting on the “Regional Action Plan for Neglected Tropical Diseases in the Western Pacific Region!”  I feel very lucky to have been able to sit in on the meeting, which hosted WHO program leaders from every country in the Western Pacific and representatives from various government agencies, NGOs, foundations, and private companies.  The guest list included people from the Gates Foundation, USAID, CDC, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, and many more.

It was very interesting to see the faces of all the individuals, all of the different languages spoken, and all of the countries represented in the room.  Each individual sitting in the room had years of health-related experience and knowledge, and after spending an hour or two in the room, it was very clear that each individual had his/her own agenda.  The education NGO would frequently raise the importance of utilizing the education system to spread awareness, while the worms NGO would often speak about mass drug administration campaigns, and each country delegate had his/her own country-specific requests.  And as I realized this, I took a quick census of the room to see how many women were there, and I was very pleased to find that roughly half of the participants were women.  While this is not an indicator of the amount of attention that was paid to women’s health-related issues during discussions, it was reassuring to see that women had a seat at the table and had a voice at a meeting that could potentially benefit millions of women throughout the Western Pacific region.

I have often wondered what it would be like to sit at a large meeting at the World Health Organization, and I feel privileged to have finally experienced it.  Perhaps, one day I will be lucky enough to also have a seat at the table!