UN Foundation

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September 16, 2011 | 12:05 PM | By

5 reasons to pay attention to a badly named meeting at the UN

Flickr, Ashitakka

Next week, in New York City, the United Nations is holding a big meeting that could affect the future of global health.

If all the gab actually translates into policy changes and action, it could redefine global health in a fairly significant way.

In an apparent attempt to scare off normal people from paying any attention, it’s called the UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (aka NCDs). I’ll be there, joining a group of journalists granted fellowships to attend from the UN Foundation (which got money for this from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).

A lot’s going on next week in New York — the UN General Assembly (to which it has been reported Iranian President Ahmadinejad will be bringing gifts this year as well as his usual rants), the Clinton Global Initiative, a new media confab called the Social Good Summit and the poorly named meeting on global health focused on this poorly named category of diseases.

But don’t let the words, or acronyms, fool you. The NCDs are big killers, much bigger than that virus in the current blockbuster movie Contagion could ever hope to be. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Clinton Global Initiative, non-communicable diseases, Social Good Summit, UN Foundation, UN Week, United Nations
September 13, 2010 | 9:00 AM | By

Jane Goodall on the Global Fund

Renowned primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall has lived and worked in central Africa for half a century.

Goodall long ago recognized the devastating synergy poverty wreaks on the environment and African wildlife. To save wildlife and natural Africa, she says, we must also work to reduce human poverty and its driving force, disease.

Here is a trailer of a documentary Goodall narrates produced by the UN Foundation in support of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria:

FILED UNDER: Basics, Health, Global Fund, Jane Goodall, UN Foundation