The 2010 Global Health Education Consortium’s  (GHEC) Conference will be held in conjunction with the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (INSP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico.  This promises to be an engaging conference.  The theme of the conference is Alliances for Global Health Education: Learning from South/South Collaboration.  More information on the conference can be found on the GHEC website here.

Those who have worked in Global Health for any period of time, will find the idea of a major conference with the focus on South/South Collaboration to be refreshing.  Many conferences have had sessions featuring purely South/South partners but we believe this is the first major conference to have this as its main focus.  In addition, it is being identified as the First Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Global Health.

We of course all remember that it was almost one year ago that many of the first reported cases of the A(H1N1) Virus were identified as occurring in Mexico.  Clearly Mexican health workers and scientists performed heroic work in the face of a mysterious epidemic. Their work helped the world avert a public health problem that could have been significantly worse that we have experienced so far.  The location of the conference, at the premiere Mexican public health institute in Cuernavaca, will provide a great opportunity to hear first-hand the story of the crisis and to share the lessons learned.