The Union hosted its 39th Union World Conference on Lung Health, which was held at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, France from 16 to 20 October 2008.The conference theme was the “Global threats to lung health: the importance of health system responses”.

The Union’s World Conference is the largest annual lung health meeting that focuses on the challenges faced by low- and middle-income countries, and what we, the lung health community, are doing about them. This year we’ve engaged in a remarkably wide consideration and debate around our theme of Health System Responses to Global Threats to Lung Health. As always at Union conferences, you could hear this lively discussion taking place not only in the sessions, but also in the corridors, the coffee areas and everywhere delegates gathered.

          

Meet the President: Dr. S Bertel Squire

S. Bertel “Bertie” Squire BSC, MB BChir, MD (Research) is a physician with 20 years of special clinical training and experience in Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine. Bertie is a Reader in Clinical Tropical Medicine and co-manager of the Centre for Research on Equity and Systems for TB and HIV/AIDS (CRESTHA) at the Liverpool (UK) School of Tropical Medicine. He trained at the University College London, Cambridge University, Royal London Hospital and Royal Free Hospital. From 1992–1995 he was head of the Department of Medicine, Kamuzu Central Hospital, Lilongwe, Malawi. He continues to collaborate with the Malawi National TB Control Programme and facilitated the transformation of this collaboration into the Trust for Research on Equity and Community Health (REACH). He has also built up a programme of multidisciplinary health research with colleagues in the UK, Malawi and China. A member of the Board since 2005, he became President of The Union this year.
See Dr. S Bertel Squire Speech (PDF 28Ko)

The Union Daily News

Thursday, 16 October 2008
More than 2,000 delegates from around the world arrived to take part in a scientific programme that included 11 post-graduate courses, 10 workshops, 54 symposia, 4 plenary sessions, 8 meet-the-expert sessions, 3 thematic slide presentations, 42 poster discussions and displays,
and several special session. We thank everyone who has contributed to developing this year’s conference and hope it will provide a platform for rigorous assessment of the global threats to lung health and contribute to our commitment to act globally for better-coordinated and more effective responses to them.

Friday, 17 October 2008
Reaching global targets for 2015 will depend on early and full TB case detection. An estimated 40% of TB cases still go undetected. The average rate of treatment success globally has reached the 85% goal.
With a projected US$ 1 billion shortfall in funding for the Global Plan, The Union, called for wealthy countries to put together a “rescue plan” for TB to fund improved human resources, user-friendly diagnostics, new treatment regimens and drugs, clinical trials for multidrug-resistant TB, an effective vaccine and management training.

Saturday, 18 October 2008
New Union President Dr. S Bertel Squire opened the inaugural session on 17 October, welcoming the delegates to the 39th Union World Conference on Lung Health. The inaugural session was then followed by the presentation of The Union’s Scientific Prize and Karel Styblo Public Health Award; the Japan Anti-Tuberculosis Association’s Princess Chichibu Global TB Memorial Award and the Stop TB Partnership Kochon Prize.

Sunday, 19 October 2008
Prof Rifat Atun, Director of the Strategic Policy and Performance Cluster of GFATM’s Executive Management Team, outlined the Global Fund’s goals and strategies in a plenary session on the contributions to health systems and human resources. Prof Atun called the Global Fund an international public-private partnership that works with technical partners, development agencies and countries to stop the three diseases. Projects support health systems strengthening in a variety of ways. For example 67% of the TB grants have a lab strengthening component, and 51% include public-private partnerships. They also support MDR-TB treatment, TB-HIV screening and treatment, prison programmes and human resources development. A new initiative invites National Strategy applications.

Monday, 20 October 2008On 20 October
The Union celebrated its 88th birthday and closed its 39th World Conference on Lung Health in Paris while inviting delegates to be part of the next conference which will take place in Cancun, Mexico from 3-7 December 2009. The theme of the 40th Union World Conference on Lung Health is “poverty and lung health” an important theme, that encompasses many different issues, but also one that highlights the fact that lung disease is all too often a problem of the poor.