Global Health Council Conference Focuses on Tech

by Elizabeth Corley

For many people in the development community, the annual conference of the Global Health Council is the highlight of the year. The conference brings together practitioners from around the world and is a great opportunity to meet up with old friends and colleagues and meet new ones. This year's theme is about new technologies. One that comes to mind is the "call me back" function on mobile phones used to increase awareness and testing for HIV/AIDS as described by Andrew Zolli, curator of the Pop!Tech conference.

The Global Health Councils has done a great job incorporating the new media. Participants are able to send in questions to speakers via Twitter, upload pictures to flickr, and read the conference blog.


For anyone who ever thought that this sector is behind the curve in terms of adopting new technologies, it is time to look again. Lots of creative applications highlighted. My favorite part is the media awards. One of this year's winners was Engle Entertainment, producer of Walk to Beautiful a documentary about women suffering from obstetric fistula. (Development Gateway put together a special collection on this topic in March of this year.) The documentary will be available on DVD the first week in June.


The most entertaining attraction in the exhibition hall at the Global Health Council annual conference is the gambling table at the Gapminder booth. On the table is a grid with average number of children on the y axis and life expectancy on x axis. The croupier selects a developing country at random. A dot appears on the table representing where that country stood for those two indicators in 1950. Players then place their chips on the table to indicate where they think the country is now. More dots appear--magically-- tracking changes in these indicators over time. The movement of the data points vividly illustrates progression, and sometimes regression, of the country.