Prof. Abdallah Daar, Professor of Public Health Sciences and of Surgery at the University of Toronto and STIAS fellow will present a talk with the title:
Innovating to Address Grand Challenges in Global Health
Abstract
We face enormous challenges in global health. Everysecond four women around the world give birth and every minute one of those women dies. HIV, malaria, TB and childhood diarrhea and pneumonia kill millions more, mostly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). At the same time chronic non-communicable diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic lung conditions and certain types of cancer, all of which can theoretically be prevented, are increasing dramatically and have reached levels where they now kill more people than infectious diseases in almost all LMICs. While some attention is now turning to address these, other issues like mentalhealth receive very little attention or funding for research or health care.
What more can be done to address these? How do we identify priorities? What are the sources of research funding? And why do we need tocare?
Abdallah Daar is Professor of Public Health Sciences and of Surgery at the University of Toronto, where he is also Senior Scientist at the Sandra Rotman Centre for Global Health. He is the Chief Scientist of Grand Challenges Canada, a new organization that funds global health research, mostly in LMICs. He is also working with two other research-funding organizations: the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases, of which he was the founding Chair; and Genome Canada, of which he is a board director. He is also Chair of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University International Institute of Global Health. He has worked as an advisor to several international organizations including the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.
He has published extensively in biomedical and clinical sciences, bioethics, and global health. His international awards include the Hunterian Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics of Science.
His last book, co-authored with Peter Singer, was “The Grandest Challenge: Taking Life-saving Science from Lab to Village.”As a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study he is working on his 7th book: “Garment of Destiny.”
