World Association of Societies of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (WASPaLM)

World Health Organization

Executive Board 117^th Session January 23^th - January 28^th 2006, Geneva, Switzerland

Report of Dr. U. P. Merten, WASPaLM NGO Representative to WHO

On the request of Dr. Marilene Melo, president WASPaLM, we represented our association at which 142 countries were represented of which there were 46 NGO representatives.

We were asked by the president to raise two issues at this meeting, viz. bacterial resistance in hospital microbiology and laboratory accreditation.
We were informed that issues for the agenda cannot be entertained unless they first receive Government support together with that of all the governments who must first be lobbied for their support of inclusion of the item on the agenda.

The item on bacterial resistance was in fact discussed at the last WHA meeting in 2005. (See documents WHA A58/A/SR/ 8, /9 and /12 on www.who.org)

This session of WHO EB was dominated by discussions on strengthening pandemic-influenza preparedness and response. (See attached document of Report by the Director General and the Secretariat EB117/2 and EB117/5 respectively). An interesting statement was presented by the NGO representative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, Mr. H.E. Bale Jr (Preparing for pandemic influenza vaccination).

There was also a report on the WHO response to Tsunami and the earth quake in South Asia. (Document EB117/31) and on strengthening health and surveillance systems: use of information technology and geographical information systems (Document EB117/32)

We held a meeting with Dr. Gaby Vercauteren from WHO and further discussed ways of cooperation and collaboration we started during our last meeting on occasion of WHA May 2005.

During the meeting we met with Dr. T. Ghebrehiwet, NGO representative of the International Council of Nurses. The issues raised were the disparities in the training of both nurses and laboratory technicians and the need to have a standardized form of training in view of the easy migration of personal within Europe.

Emerging from the general discussion of the Assembly was the importance of involvement of the public in general health measures since their cooperation is critical in enhancing our approaches to governments, closing the gap of knowledge and understanding.

We are again grateful to WASPaLM for the opportunity to attend this meeting.

Dr. Utz P. Merten
Dr. Robby Bacchus

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