Fifty students from over twenty UK universities took part in the UK’s first Aid 4 Health Simulation in Cambridge on March 9th & 10th. The simulation, organized by the Humanitarian Centre, aimed to capture the complex dynamics of the negotiations for aid and wider aid processes. Students played the role of a multitude of actors and institutions including, amongst others, ministries of the Malawian Government, the World Bank, UNICEF, the World Health Organisation and USAID.
Prior to the (more...)
Reflections on the Annual Lecture: Saving Lives, Building Resilience and the UK
Words by Rose Beale, Photos by Elizabeth Wagemann
(c)Elizabeth Wagemann
Chris Austin MP -Head of Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department – began by emphasising the deep roots of the UK’s approach to humanitarian relief: built on our ‘collective humanity’. In response to the Portuguese earthquake and tsunami of 1755 parliament voted £100,000 and despatched ships ‘forthwith’. As Vattel – the author (more...)
The 2011 UN Summit on NCDs highlighted the pressing need to address NCDs globally, particularly in developing countries which are the hardest hit but have the least resources.
The Cambridge Post-UN Summit Conference on 20th January 2012 explored next steps for the UK by gathering experts from academia and civil society with representatives from the private sector, the media, and government departments.
On the 31/01/2012 The Humanitarian Centre held a Parliamentary reception which aimed to (more...)
Part 3. Debates and Reflections
By Alexa Zeitz
Photographs by Elizabeth Wagemann
The conference threw up many questions, as is to be expected at this early phase in the NCD movement. Among these was the role of the private sector and conflicts of interest. While the tobacco industry has been roundly rejected from debates about NCDs because of its vested interest in perpetuating one of the behavioural causes of NCDs, the alcohol, food and drug industries still have conflicted positions. Many (more...)
Part 2. Mental Health and Partnerships
By Alexa Zeitz
Photographs by Elizabeth Wagemann
The topic of mental health had been largely off the agenda at the UN Summit, the Humanitarian Centre conference recognized the importance of addressing this most neglected chronic disease. Carol Brayne, Director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, explained that mental health goes unaddressed because of a big lack of data, low numbers of health workers and, most importantly, stigma and (more...)
Part 1. The UN NCD summit: Frustrations and Optimism.
By Alexa Zeitz
Photographs by Alice Robinson
“Shocking”. This is what Richard Howitt, MEP for East of England, called the global incidence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Howitt, who gave the welcome address that opened the Humanitarian Centre’s Post-UN Summit Conference on NCDs and Mental Health in Developing Countries on January 20th, said he saw the U.N. Summit in September 2011 as a “trigger” for global action. He (more...)
by Bryant Okoroji
Pictures By Helen Atwood (c) CrativeElla at Encourage Photography
Video courtesy of Cambridge Union Society
In a post-apocalyptic world, who would you trust with your health? Who would you protect? Who is most important? At the 2011 Global Health Life Raft Debate, experts from a variety of disciplines debated why their particular expertise would be most useful in this whimsical scenario. The debate put the experts in the hot seat, as they competed for the one (more...)
By Anne French
Professor Al-Rasheed, professor of anthropology at King’s College, London, on Human and Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia and native of Saudi Arabia, began a wide-ranging talk by arguing that although Saudi Arabia was rarely reported on in the Western media, compared to the “hotspots of the Arab world” such as Egypt and Syria, where the events of the Arab Spring have dominated news headlines for months, it would be wrong to think that nothing was happening.
She drew attention in (more...)
On Friday 25 November at 7:30pm the Humanitarian Centre presents, the first ever Global Health Life Raft Debate. Who will survive??
We imagine there has been an apocalyptic disaster, and that the sole survivors, the audience, have built a life raft to take them to a new land, where they will have the opportunity to build a new society.
Experts from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds in Global Health will vie for the one remaining space on the life raft, each presenting an argument for (more...)
By Michaela Collord
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Racy dialogue, slapstick humour, tragic encounters, true courage and base cowardice, a sudden turnaround and (more...)
