Week 1 - The Big Picture

Last Thursday we met for our first class in Emerging Trends in Global Health and I was amazed at the energy and enthusiasm generated in the class. My thoughts on issues raised are as follows...
This was the first time I had seen some of the charts shown on the lecture slides and they really helped put things in perspective. I knew that there were deficiencies in some countries as far as population growth, but did not realize that on the whole the world population was actually moving towards equilibrium. I knew that chronic/non-communicable diseases had over-taken infectious diseases in global mortality rates, but the fact that they afflict 60% of the world's population is still astonishing to me and I realized that not many people outside our realm of global health realize this. In fact, during a discussion over the weekend with some friends i relayed this information and they were as amazed as I was. Just getting this kind of information out to "every day people" who may not dig for information past the MSN home page would improve global consciousness immensely. I liked the video for the Millennium Development Goals established by the WHO (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8153215241403626500&q=development+and+health&hl=en) and found it to be especially effective in broadcasting its message. It is important to set high goals, and while they may seem difficult to achieve given the context of the present world (perceived apathy, confusion of information), it would seem that this gives us even more of an incentive to strive for these accomplishments. Even in attaining these goals we would never be finished, for things keep on moving and changing. I am sure as goals are approached, new ones will always appear.