U.S. Health Partnerships in the Mekong

The conference is an important opportunity to hear from several high-level U.S. officials on how the Mekong's health challenges increasingly matter to U.S. national interests, and how accelerating U.S. engagement in the region reflects this shift. It is also an unusual opportunity to hear from diverse Mekong leaders, in government, university, non-governmental bodies and international organizations, on how they view both the region's priority health challenges and the expanding opportunities for partnerships with U.S. agencies.  Priority attention will be given to how investments in health address equity and broad developmental challenges. There will also be considerable discussion of health security, including artemisinin resistant malaria and emerging infectious diseases.

 

Speakers will include:

 

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, FDA Commissioner

 

Mr. Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

 

Rear Admiral Colin Chinn, U.S. Pacific Command Surgeon

 

Dr. Bernard Nahlen, Deputy Coordinator of the President's Malaria Initiative

Dr. Vandine Or, Director of International Relations at the Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Cambodia

Dr. Alan Magill, Director for Malaria at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will lead a panel of experts in a conversation on the challenges in addressing artemisinin resistant malaria in the Mekong. On that occasion, CSIS will also release a new report, Drug-Resistant Malaria: A Generation of Progress in Jeopardy along with a video on artemisinin resistance.

 

A second panel will put a special focus on health in Myanmar, major initiatives now under way to strengthen health, and how health can shape Myanmar's transition. On that occasion, CSIS will release Rehabilitating Health in the Myanmar Transition: "This is the time we have been dreaming of for decades," based on August visit to the country by a CSIS delegation.

 

This event will also be webcast live at www.SmartGlobalHealth.org/Live.