News
First ever Advisory Committee on Health to be convened
‘Virtual’ will be the hospital that will be showcased, not physically there but aptly brought to life through software, when the Commonwealth Medical Association (CMA) holds its 24th Triennial Conference in Colombo, with some firsts on the table.
In mid-October many eminent personalities from Commonwealth countries across the world, including Commonwealth Secretary General Baroness Patricia Scotland and Commonwealth Foundation Chairman and former Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Anand Satyanand, are due to fly-in to Colombo to take part in the conference themed ‘Digital Health for Health and Wellbeing’ from October 14 to 16 at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel. The conference is scheduled to be inaugurated by President Maithripala Sirisena.
A first-ever will be the convening of the 16-member Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Health (CACH), the highest policy formulating-body in the field of health in the Commonwealth, in Colombo, away from its traditional home-base of London, United Kingdom.
This is not all, the Sunday Times learns, for the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council has partnered with the conference to organise the first Commonwealth Healthcare Business and Investment Forum with the participation of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council Chairman Lord Marland of Odstock, Wiltshire.
“Both these ‘firsts’ are a signal honour for Sri Lanka,” says CMA’s President-designate Prof. Vajira H.W. Dissanayake who will guide this august body in the next three years.
The 24th Triennial Conference is hosted by the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka and the Government of Sri Lanka following an invitation extended by the country during the 23rd Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held here in November 2013 and also at the Commonwealth Health Ministers’ Meetings in Geneva in May 2015 and May 2016.
The CMA is spread across the six regions of South-East Asia & Australia; Central Asia; Eastern, Central & Southern Africa; West Africa; Europe; and Canada & the Caribbean. Established in 1962, the CMA is a non-governmental organisation with the main objective of assisting and strengthening the capacities of national Medical Associations (in Sri Lanka it is the SLMA) of Commonwealth countries to improve health, well-being and human rights in their countries and within their communities.
Incidentally, while the CMA had been formally launched at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo back in 1962 with Dr. A.D.P.A. Wijegoonewardene as its first President, the SLMA is the oldest professional Medical Association in Asia and Australasia, dating back to 1887.
Not only the CMA Triennial Conference but also the CACH meeting being held on its fringes — where Health Secretaries and Focal Points for Health from Commonwealth countries and other regional organizations will make crucial policy decisions — is seen as being both politically and economically important for Sri Lanka. The Commonwealth Healthcare Business and Investment Forum, meanwhile, is aimed at bringing in much needed direct foreign investment to the country.
Prof. Dissanayke who takes over the CMA mantle from Dr. Solaiman Juman said that a more active role is being envisaged for the CMA in the current global context, while the CMA has been working in stronger partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat since 2013.
“We are working closely to try to extend the area of the Commonwealth Secretariat in the implementation of various programmes and initiatives, with the flagship programme being the Commonwealth Health Hub,” he explained, pointing out that the conference’s website would strengthen the aim of ‘connect, collect, consult and collaborate’ among healthcare personnel in Commonwealth countries.
Reiterating that the CMA has identified digital health as a tool that can be used to promote health and well being in Commonwealth countries and communities, Prof. Dissanayake, himself a whiz with computers, is hopeful that at the conclusion of the conference they would be able to launch the Commonwealth Digital Health Network which in turn would become the main CMA project in each and every Commonwealth country.
And Sri Lanka is set to play a leadership role in this digital health initiative, as the country has been able to develop capacity in ehealth and mhealth at a low cost, the Sunday Times understands.
The proof lies in the fact that Sri Lanka’s District Nutrition Monitoring System developed by the Health Ministry in collaboration with UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) and the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka won the mBillionth Award from the Digital Empowerment Foundation as the best early-stage healthcare mobile app in South Asia.
“This is now used by 600 midwives in the three districts of Matale, Polonnaruwa and Nuwara Eliya to monitor the nutrition status of children,” says Prof. Dissanayake, creating the vision of how digital health could be used as an umbrella of care to cover the aging population with non-communicable diseases; monitor maternal and child health and nutrition; and control tobacco use and substance abuse. A main sponsor of the conference is the global software giant Microsoft.
When launching the conference, Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said that Sri Lanka has pioneered various eHealth, mHealth and now digital health initiatives with very low-cost free and open-source software backed by a unique postgraduate training programme for doctors aimed at creating leaders in health informatics. By 2019, Sri Lanka will become the second country in the world after the United States of America to have board-certified health informaticians.
More than 100 distinguished speakers including the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Health & Education Unit Director Dr. Joanna Nurse; Melbourne University’s Laureate Professor Alan Lopez; Global He@lth 2030 Innovation Task Force Executive Director Denis Gilhooly; Asia eHealth Information Network Chairman Dr. Alvin Marcelo; OpenMRS Co-Founder & President Paul Biondich; dhis2 Co-founder Jorn Braa; a ‘Father of the Internet’, Vint Cerf ; Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific Director Callum Bir; World Medical Association President Sir Michael Marmot; and Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programmes Chief Executive Officer Elyse Summers are billed to address the 24th Triennial Conference.
More than 500 participants are expected to attend and will include doctors, nurses, midwives, other healthcare workers, hospital operators and businessmen from around the Commonwealth.
| Important sesssions The CMA’s 24th Triennial Conference will focus on many important issues facing the modern world. With anti-microbial resistance emerging as a threat, a symposium has been organised to look at this topic from all angles, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Pharmacists’ Association and the Pharmaceutical Society of Sri Lanka. There will also be a special symposium on the Commonwealth response to the global eradication of polio, in collaboration with Rotary International, with the participation of the Chair of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee, Michael McGovern. Some of the other important sessions will be on Open Access Publications in collaboration with INASP, an organisation working out of Oxford, and a Workshop on Research and Clinical Ethics in collaboration with the University of Miami. “Sri Lanka is keen to promote its health sector which is on par with rest of the world. Health tourism is one subject that will be studied, while partnerships with health providers in other countries will also be explored,” said Prof. Vajira H.W. Dissanayake. (For more information please e-mail: office@cma2016.org) |