'64th World Health Assembly will not host Kuwaiti experts'

Sunday,15 May 2011

By : Staff Writer Jameel W. Karaki KUWAIT: A source at the ministry of health revealed that a group of specialists at the Ministry of health expressed their concerns for being labeled as unqualified by the ministry to attend the sixty-fourth World Health Assembly (WHA) that will take place in Geneva during May 16-24, 2011, Where the delegation will be chaired by Dr. Hilal Al Sayer, Minister of Health. However, according to the source these qualified people, were replaced by unqualified people or people who are not experts in the fields to be discussed in the summit due to personal interests, nepotism, and political factors since some of these members are supported by a well-known constitutional movement. The source also revealed that an official at the ministry who ended his services at the ministry travelled to Moscow to participate in the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy LifeStyles despite the fact that his appointment was ended and was not renewed. In addition, Kuwaiti experts were excluded from participating in this conference.  Moreover, WHA is a yearly summit of the World Health Organization's (WHO) 193 member countries and it is the higher decision-making organization of WHO. The Executive Board prepared an explicit health agenda that will be discussed in the summit as well as other issues including the program budget, administration and management matters of WHO. The provisional Agenda of the Plenary session will discuss several topics that require each country to send specialists in these fields such as, pandemic influenza preparedness, Global Immunization vision strategy, Substandard, spurious, falsely-labeled, falsified, counterfeit medical products, Cholera, strategies for the safe management of drinking-water for human consumption and other issues.