IN FOCUS: RMNCH & UN September 2011
12-22 SEPTEMBER 2011 | NEW YORK
PMNCH: Integrating NCDs - The Next Frontier in Women's Health
Monday 19 September 2011 Panel Discussion 1500-1700
Integrating NCDS: The Next Frontier in Women’s Health was a special side event of the UN High-level Meeting on Non-communicable Diseases and the Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health.
Co-Hosts: The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health with the American Cancer Society, the GAVI Alliance, PATH, the UNFPA, Women Deliver and the World Heart Federation.
Government leaders, civil society partners, UN agencies and public-private global organizations hosted a side event to examine the next frontier in women’s health: the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) among women in low and middle-income countries. A distinguished panel of international leaders highlighted the need to achieve better health outcomes for women by leveraging existing resources, policies and programmes to create a lifecycle approach to women’s health that galvanizes success toward health MDGs and ensures women’s rights to access healthcare by expanding synergies with global efforts to prevent and control NCDs. The panel also took note of new health technologies, such as HPV vaccines and early screening and treatment tools to prevent cervical cancer cases and new gender-focused models for NCD programmes and policies that make possible major breakthroughs in women’s health.
A task force was announced with the goal of bringing together key organizations in women’s health and in NCDs to help create and shape the new emerging women’s health agenda, sharing best practices and leveraging expertise. The task force will further global awareness and support for a gender-based approach to NCD prevention and control, gender-specific financing for NCD programs, as well as the expansion of technical capacity and resources to meet women’s health needs throughout their lifecycle. The PMNCH will advise the new Taskforce. For more information on the Taskforce, link to the Press release, on the right.
The panel discussion was moderated by a well-known health commentator, Dr Richard Besser, of ABC News and included :
- Dr Asha-Rose Migiro, Deputy UN Secretary General
- Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director, UNFPA
- Dr Agnes Binagwaho, Minister of Health of Rwanda
- Professor K. Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India
- Dr Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Olopade, U niversity of Chicago and US National Cancer Advisory Board
- Dr Seth Berkley, CEO GAVI Alliance
- Dr Chris Elias, CEO, PATH
- Jill Sheffield, Founder and President of Women Deliver
- Dr Carole Presern, Director, PMNCH, will open the discussion period, speaking to : Integrating NCDs into the RMNCH continuum of care
The panel and launch of the task force was followed by a short Question-and-Answer session and an awards ceremony. Those acknowledged in the Awards Ceremony include:
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, for her NCD leadership and personal survivorship, and
South African First Lady Madame Madiba Zuma, for her global leadership on cancer, NCDs and women’s health.
To celebrate and honor the lives of women affected by NCDs, the Brazilian photographic exhibition, De Peito Aberto, which depicts a woman’s journey through breast cancer, was on show.
