Newsletter 38 - Seasons greetings

Design by Mohanad Nader

Issue: 38

3rd January 2007

IPSF Publications

The IPSF Executive wishes all IPSF members, supporters and friends a joyful festive season and a successful New Year!

Statement from the UN Special Envoy to Stop TB on World AIDS Day 2006 President Jorge Sampaio UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Stop TB, Jakarta, Indonesia World AIDS Day is an occasion to acknowledge the incredible progress made towards ensuring access to life-saving anti-retroviral therapy, ARTs. But this promise of life of ARTs will be undermined if we do not ensure that a curable disease like TB is addressed effectively.

TB is the leading cause of death amongst people living with HIV/AIDS. The lethal combination of the two diseases makes it imperative that AIDS and TB programmes in affected countries work in close collaboration.

The recent identification of extensively drug resistant TB, XDR TB, and its devastating impact amongst those with HIV demonstrates the deadly synergy between these two diseases. It demands massive new investment to strengthen the current systems for TB treatment and hasten the development of new TB tools and the urgent implementation of national TB-HIV policies.

We need to start working on tomorrow's solutions today. It's time to do it right, to do it now and to do it together.

FINAL CALL! Interested in being a Moving On Research Co-ordinator?

So, you’ve heard about Moving On, IPSF’s series of pharmacy education research projects. They’ve received international attention and generated much global interest. Want to be part of it all?

The Moving On II and III Research Groups are looking for co-ordinators in countries that are not already part of the projects! As the projects are scheduled to end in March/April 2007, this is a final call for interested students to contact us. Non-member countries are invited to participate too.

Moving On II studies the quality of education via the student learning experience. It is the first to make international comparisons in the field of pharmacy education, and the largest study of its type to date! The project has been generating much debate and interest at the IPSF and International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) congresses for the past two years. More than 6500 responses have been received from 26 countries to date. For more info, contact project chair Pedro Lucas at pedro.t.lucas@gmail.com.

Moving On III, a collaborative project with FIP, is the first international study to evaluate student attitudes towards migration. As the Brain Drain issue is a very significant and global one, the project has received support from international organisations such as WHO, UNESCO, OECD and the Institute of Migration.

About 800 responses have been received from final year students in nine countries so far. For more info, contact project chair Tana Wuliji at twuliji@varsity.co.nz.

Project funding available For the first time ever, IPSF will subsidise the costs of running our research projects. However, due to limited funds available, we will only be able to cover the questionnaire printing costs for countries listed in the World Bank’s low and lower-middle income categories. For more information or to request an application form, contact Zhining Goh, Chairperson of Education and Practice, at eduprac@ipsf.org.

Joint Working Group meeting for the World Healthcare Students Symposium (WHSS) Kerstin Neumann, JWG member At the last weekend of November, the first meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) with the Organising Committee (OC) took place in Portugal. The JWG was kindly hosted by the Portuguese medicine, pharmacy and nursing students, who had organised accommodation and meeting space for the JWG, social events in the evening, and a trip from Lisbon to Albufeira, where WorldHSS will take place in November 2007. The site visit was promising: the hotel and the surroundings look really good. During our meetings, we were able to concretise the educational program and got a deep insight into the work of the OC as well, who are working really hard to make the symposium an unforgettable experience for every one. Watch out for news at the WorldHSS web site!

In the evenings we had the chance to get to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere and had a lot of fun in Lisbon’s bars and cafés. The whole JWG left satisfied to move on to a well-organized WorldHSS 2007 filled with an informative and challenging program!

The educational program of WorldHSS will focus on four main topics, one for each day: we start with the Education Day, where the discussions will be about the possibilities of multiprofessional education, Bologna process and other topics around health care students’ issues. Day 2 will be Ethics Day, dealing with questions around ethics codes for health care professionals, pharmaceutical testing and other topics; followed by Global Health Day, where participants will have the chance to get information and work on public and global health care projects. The symposium ends with the focus on Interprofessional Collaboration and views on how health care professionals can collaborate in- and outside the hospital.

During the symposium there will also be extra time to meet and get to know other health care students from your own country. Another highlight will be the solving of a case study in an international and multidisciplinary team during the symposium.

Upcoming Events www.ku.edu.np/apps2007

www.ipsf2007.org Registration starting soon!