This week at WHO - before Easter

This week is a short week, as we have Friday off (Good Friday) and Monday for Easter. I may be going to Paris or Venice over the weekend with friends. Either one would be awesome. :)

This week with only four days has been quite hectic. I have on an average worked 9 hours a day at least. I am currently working on filling some tables for 8 pilot countries for elimination of congenital syphilis(CS) and mother-to-child transmission(MTCT) of HIV. I am looking in various excel sheets for information regarding new HIV infections in children, how many people got tested for HIV in 2010, how many tested positive, how many women attending antenatal care had their male partner tested, etc. The 9 pilot countries are Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakthstan, South Africa, Botswana, Chile, Barbados, Malaysia, Cambodia, which are countries chosen by the regional offices of WHO. This exercise is important as my supervisor is hosting a bigger meeting on elimination of congenital syphilis and MTCT, where they will discuss important topics like how to define that CS and MTCT has been eliminated. For instance, the rate may have been eliminated nationally in a given country, but regionally in that same country the rate may be rather high. And the question then is, can one then say that CS and MTCT has been eliminated. Right now we also have teleconferences with the regional offices about the pilot countries, so it has been necessary for me to have them ready. It takes quite a bit amount of time to do them, as I have to get information from 3-5 different sources, and my supervisor asks me to revise something everytime I have finished it. But eventually I will get there. Right now, I'm just thinking: pilot tables, the never ending story :)

Today on April 4 WHO had this big event as it is world health day. The theme is ageing and good health, with the slogan, is 60 the new 30. My generation may live to be 100 years old. They had some talks today, but I didn't have time to attend them due to my deadlines, I prioritized going to the tai chi session over lunch, as Margaret Chan would participate, and I yet hadn't seen her during my stay here. She is like Ban-Ki Moon to WHO. People took pictures when she came out, and she got all modest asking people not to , as she wasn't doing anything, just standing there :) it was funny. What was nice about the tai chi was that they had elder people leading the session. You can see the elder woman with the sword, she was cool :) After tai chi we had lunch and some amazing cake. Check out the pics :)