By Vasantham Annadurai, Public Health in Europe, Fall 2012
At the beginning of the week of Thanksgiving, our Public Health class took a field trip to Geneva for two days. Some students chose to travel there early for the weekend, but most of us arrived on Monday. It was a busy day, and the next was busier, but they were well spent at the headquarters of international organizations that we’ve been learning about all quarter.
One of our class assignments before the trip was to research and give presentations on many different international organizations, so we had a general background on each of organizations we visited. On the first day, we visited the headquarters of the International Labor Organization and Doctors Without Borders. Our visit to the latter came through somewhat last-minute, even though our teacher didn’t expect us to be able to gain entry. The staff there spoke about their direct field experiences, such as their treatments for women with fistula in Chad, and their reconstructive operations on civilians with facial mutilations from the conflict in Northern Uganda.
But the busiest and most informative visit was our day at the World Health Organization. We were lucky enough to be given access to use their libraries for our group research projects. We learned more about the WHO’s decade-old program called HINARI, which stands for Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative. It aims to provide developing countries with access to a large collection of health literature (with over 8500 journals). This access is often free, but sometimes costs 1,000 USD (decided on a country-by-country basis). This year, Northwestern has been asked to help sponsor Organizacion Para Los Niños in Bolivia, which is having trouble paying the fee, as it is the first year Bolivia has been required to pay the fee. The organization works with children who are orphaned or are victims of violence and sexual trafficking. Two students in our program, Danielle Fong and Caroline Dong, have agreed to help fundraise for HINARI back in Evanston. If you’re interested, you can learn more about the organization here, or you can contact Danielle and Caroline.
Our class at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva! (Photo from Kelly Bahng)