Hello everyone and welcome to yet another travel post! So, I told you about my first training that I went to Zimbabwe to deliver, which was a Training for New Human Rights Trainers (TNHRT), but today’s post is about the Africa Regional Meeting (ARM) that held in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The entire meeting, including accommodation, meals and trainings took place in the beautiful ZESA Training centre. It was very peaceful, and was purpose-built, so it sufficed as a very good venue for the ARM.
The Meeting held between 21-24 June 2018. It was attended by delegates from across Africa and beyond; Nigeria, Ghana. Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan, also Jordan, Peru, Slovakia and France – among many other countries were ably represented by medical students in various capacities.
The opening ceremony was held at the Parirenyatwa hospital and was attended to by the Honorable Minister of Health Dr. David Parirenyatwa, who actually trained at the University of Lagos! Toyosi and I certainly had to meet him afterwards haha.
The way the ARM is structured is as follows, first thing is breakfast then we all go into our various Standing Committee sessions. As I’m the Regional Assistant for Africa in the Standing Committee on Human Rights and Peace (SCORP) I planned, executed and evaluated the SCORP Sessions, with the assistance of my sessions team that included the SCORP Liaison Officer Majko, and my darling Shahd Rasheed – who was a life saver for me!
The SCORP sessions included topics such as Human Rights 101, Peace and Conflict, Medical Ethics, Prejudice and Discrimination, Child Abuse, among others. The participants were amazing, so active, they willingly shared from their individual wealth of experiences in their various national medical organizations; it was really enlightening hearing their ideas.
Asides from Standing Committee Sessions, there were joint sessions between standing committees – so SCORP had a joint session with the Standing Committee on Public Health (SCOPH) on mental health, and another joint session with the Standing Committee on Sexual and Reproductive health including AIDs (SCORA) on Female Genital Mutilation.
Next we’d have lunch then head to either an activity fair, or plenary session or theme event. The theme being Medical Social Accountability, had us learn from a representative of the World Federation of Medical Education (WfME) on the importance of medical practitioners being socially accountable and doing our best for those around us, both within and outside the healthcare environment.
Then we’d have dinner and a social event would ensue! Ranged from a games night to a traffic light party to the IFMSA Traditional National Food and Drink Party.
It was a lovely time and I’m glad to have met all these wonderful people! I’m sure we’ll impact our world positively and see each other in major positions in the near future.
More photos after the cut! (feel like a movie producer saying that haha)
Lots of love,
ETP. xo
