Participants

Co-chairs

• David Challoner (USA) and
  
• Guy de Thé (France)

Members

• Shigetaka Asano, Tokyo University (Japan - representing Pr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa)
• Peter Lachmann (UK)
• Tony Mbewu (South Africa)
• Perla Santos-Ocampo (Philippines)
• Sevket Ruacan (Turkey)
• Jaime Sepulveda (Mexico)
• Zhengguo Wang (China)

IAMP Secretariat

• Patrick Kelley (USA)
• Leslie Baer (USA)

Guests

• John Campbell, Associate Director, InterAcademy Council (Netherlands)
• Jincheng Kang, Chinese Academy of Engineering (China)
• Xiaojie Liang, Chinese Academy of Engineering (China)
• Louis Auquier (France)

The meeting of the Executive Committee of the InterAcademy Medical Panel was called to order by Guy de Thé.

Pr. Jacques-Louis Binet, Secrétaire perpétuel de l'Académie nationale de Médecine, welcomed the Executive Committee.

Photographs taken will be e-mailed to Leslie Baer to be posted on the IAMP website.

Disease Control Priorities Project Update (DCPP)

Patrick Kelley gave a brief progress report on the Disease Control Priorities Project.

• reviewing the content and author participation in the overall project
• providing selective reviews of chapters and working papers
• critically discussing the main findings and important milestones
• identifying two independent reviewers for each of the 80 individual chapters and secure their agreement to providing in-depth assessment of the specific chapter

To date Patrick and his staff have obtained the firm concurrence from 138 of the total 160 reviewers, over 85%. There is need to get additional reviewers and they will try and get reviewers from both developing and developed countries, but in most cases Patrick feels they have succeeded in having those dimensions represented. He felt the hardest chapters for which to find reviewers have dealt with subjects like district hospitals and long term care in management of clinical services.

Starting with a budget of $176,000, the project is in very good shape financially -- $134,000 remained as of the end of February, having spent less than a third of the budget and with more than 80% of the work completed. The residual funds may be available for use in dissemination activities.

The IAMP owes Dean Jamison, Editor and Chief of the DCPP, a good deal of gratitude for this opportunity. It has not only created work for the IAMP Secretariat, but it has also been an unexpected send off and platform for the IAMP in policy.

Venue and Timing for the IAMP Global Meeting

Mr. Jincheng Kang, Deputy Director-General of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, read a letter of invitation from the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) to jointly host the 2005 IAMP Global Meeting in China. The likely venue would be Beijing as CAS and CAE, are headquartered in Beijing. CAE and CAS would host the IAMP global meeting, and provide local meeting facilities, including meeting hall and rooms, projection equipment, transportation within Beijing city, and a reception for participants and invited guests. There would be additional support from CAE if necessary, including technical visits to medical institutions around the city, meetings with high level officials of government, language translation services, etc.

Guy de Thé queried Mr. Kang about the possibility of having Shanghai as a venue because of its many institutions of biomedical science. Mr. Kang responded that Shanghai could certainly be considered a possible venue, and assured the committee that a joint CAE/CAS committee will be organized and work closely with the co-chairs toward success of the 2005 global meeting. The timing of the meeting was discussed at length and favored a time as late as possible in the year for the DCPP documents to be ready, but with the weather conditions in Beijing becoming difficult by mid-November, it was agreed that late October/early November would be best.

David Challoner presented the Croatian proposal. The Croatian Academy of Science and the Croatian Academy of Medicine jointly proposed to host the IAMP global meeting in which their organizing committee would be fully responsible for the cost of local meeting facilities and social program. The city of Dubrovnik was the proposed meeting site.

Tony Mbewu presented the application to host the global meeting in South Africa with Cape Town, Johannesburg, or Durban as possible venues. The Academy of Science of South Africa is a new academy, established in 1998 and with 250 members. It would not be able to financially support the hosting of a conference with direct finance. However, their experience is that a conference of the importance of the IAMP would certainly be possible to raise some of the funding within the country either from academic or non-governmental sources.

Pr. Santos-Ocampo questioned the prospective host countries about their governments' visa policies for scientific conferences and visits to laboratories. Both Mr. Kang and Pr. Mbewu could not foresee a problem with visas.

After much discussion, it was the consensus of the IAMP Executive Committee to accept the Chinese proposal to have 2005 IAMP Global meeting in China.

Topic of the 2005 IAMP Global Meeting

The roll out of the Disease Control Priorities Project was selected as the primary focus for the next global meeting.

The first group of integrating chapters would be a way of organizing the approach of the meeting with smaller group discussions to flesh out ideas or cross-cutting lessons.

The first six chapters are:

1. Investing in Health
2. Intervention Cost-Effectiveness: Overview of General Messages and Specific Neglected Opportunities
3. Delivering the Right Interventions Well: Packaging, Policy, and Health Systems Priorities
4. Changing the Health of Populations: Successful Programs from Around the World
5. Research and Development Priorities
6. Trends in Mortality by Cause, 1990-2001

It is one of IAMP's goals to empower medical academies around the world and one of the outcomes of the 2002 Paris meeting was the policy statement on emerging infections. For the first time medical academies called on their appropriate Ministers of Health and introduced themselves as the medical or science academy and explained that they were members of this global coalition of world medical academies and presented the policy document. It is this kind of interaction that we wish to help our academies develop over a period of time. In looking at formulating the agenda for the IAMP global meeting, perhaps a discussant could look at each of major presentation and talk about how our member academies might return home and make use of whatever information is in each of those pieces of the program.

Dr. Sépulveda interjected to make clear to the Committee that the summary book of the DCPP is not guaranteed to be available at the time of the coming IAMP global meeting. The plan is to have an "Executive Summary" that will contain most likely the first six chapters initially, plus a summary of the main recommendations of the whole book, but when that will come out cannot be assured. Hopefully it will be prior to the printing of the whole book, but it can also be simultaneous.

Jaime Sépulveda gave a brief history of the first volume of the DCP. The DCP was a companion to the World Development Report 1993 of the World Bank, which was devoted to investing in global health and was politically most influential. The companion book, DCP, was more influential in more academic circles. The World Bank did the promotion of both. It is not clear to Dr. Sépulveda to what extent the World Bank, WHO, NIH or any of the co-sponsors promoted the product. His opinion is that the DCPP will have less visibility than the original because it will not be a companion book to any international agency annual report. Much later discussion dealt extensively with dissemination strategies.

Going back to the IAMP Global meeting program, it was suggested that the length of the upcoming global meeting in China should be three days because of its distance from home for many attendees.

Peter Lachmann suggested having one or two symposia on technical scientific themes, such as "Zoonoses and the effect of agricultural practice on the spread of disease from animals to humans", a suggestion from Dr. Joost Ruitenberg of the Netherlands, who could be invited for a formal lecture.

Sevket Ruacan suggested non-invasive imaging as a simple presentation topic or as a topic for a future meeting. He also suggested that we think of topics beyond the DCPP for future meetings.

Guy de Thé suggested Health Research in developing countries.

The Executive Committee meeting broke for lunch.

The afternoon session was convened by Dr. Challoner.

Relocation of IAMP Secretariat to Trieste

The Italian Government and the regional authorities have agreed to house the IAMP Secretariat in Trieste. A letter from Pr. Mohamed Hassan, Executive Director of the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS), and Pr. Paolo Budinich, President of Trieste International Foundation, recently received by Dr. Challoner and Dr de Thé indicated the acceptance of IAMP's proposal to house IAMP's Secretariat in Trieste, including the required space, administrative and financial support to be provided by TWAS-ICTP (Third World Academy of Sciences–International Center for Theoretical Physics). The IAMP Executive Secretariat will be provided with 300,000 Euros for the first three years of activity with 50,000 Euros available in 2004.

It is proposed that the secretariat in Trieste will progressively assume the secretariat affairs, and that the completion of the ACE/DCPP responsibilities will remain at IOM with Patrick Kelley and staff. An administrative site in Trieste and a policy site housed in the home academy of the chair are reasonable and work well as demonstrated by the IAP organizational format. IAMP may eventually be written into Italian national legislation for support as has been the TWAS and recently the IAP.

Zhengguo Wang of the Chinese delegation offered, on behalf of the Director of the CAE, to house the IAMP Secretariat with office space in their yet-to-be-built facility in Beijing with financial support equal to the Italian authorities. This offer was appreciated and might become an alternative to consider.

The Co-Chairs propose the IAMP Secretariat move to Trieste as a 3-year developmental trial with the option to assess its success at the end of two years. The Executive Committee unanimously agreed with this motion.

The IAMP Executive Committee would like to take the opportunity to thank the IOM for its support and collaboration and the NAS under Bruce Alberts' leadership for facilitating the various global alliances (IAP, IAMP and IAC). Ken Shine, as President of the IOM, very much agreed with the IAMP agenda in his presidency and helped the IAMP to get off the ground in Paris in 2002. Harvey Fineberg, now as Ken's successor, has a high professional interest in global health as indicated with his recruitment of Patrick Kelley' for the Board on Global Health. The IAMP can continue to count on appropriate support and facilitation from the IOM.

Governance

Something for the IAMP EC to consider is the rotation of the co-chairs in 2005 at the time of the global meeting. One thing to think about is the organizational leadership in support of the co-chairs that will be required and the infrastructure that the next co-chairs can personally bring with them to the organization.

Funding Issues

The IAMP Executive Committee agreed to implement a two-tier system of annual dues of $1000 for developing countries and $2000 for developed countries based on the OECD member-countries list, and should be requested by the IAMP Secretariat once it has been moved to Trieste in 2004 so academies can program it in their budgets for 2005.

InterAcademy Council (IAC)

John Campbell, IAC Associate Director, distributed copies of the InterAcademy Council's first report, Inventing a Better Future.  He discussed the upcoming projects of the IAC, among them the issues regarding creating capacity throughout the developing countries to address science technology and medical issues. The second project was a request from Kofi Annan to look at agricultural interests in Africa and ways that science and technology could benefit outcome and productivity. IAC is also beginning a project on global energy issues. UNESCO has requested the IAC to look at the World Heritage System. IAC is also looking into a project on global water issues and will be convening an expert panel to develop a prospectus.

Inventing a Better Future looks at the realities of increasing capacity of science, technology, medicine, and engineering in developing countries.  This subject was deliberately chosen because the IAC board believed no matter what issue they would look at in the years ahead the question of scientific and technology capacity around the world was going to be fundamental to achieving any of the recommendations no matter what topic they might have. The report was disseminated on February 5, 2004 by Kofi Annan at the United Nations to the UN Ambassadors. There are currently no topics of health or medical nature on IAC's agenda. This is in part because of the existence of the IAMP.

David Challoner and Guy de Thé would like to proceed in conversations with the IAC, as to an appropriate means of representing the interests of the Academies of Medicine and Health Sciences in the programs and the governance of the IAC. The intent of the affiliation with IAC would be that the IAMP collaborate with IAC on health policy-related studies.

If this affiliation develops with IAC, it would be IAMP's obligation to have in place a means by which to tap the interests and expertise of IAMP's members and the EC in helping IAC develop a health and health science agenda.

Action Item – John Campbell

John Campbell will send copies of the IAC's publication, Inventing a Better Future, to all IAMP's member academies with a note from the IAMP Co-Chairs based on the letter that IAP used for dissemination to its members. The note will ask for feedback that is appropriate to our next global meeting, in particular for medical or health capacity issues in the member academies' countries.

Website

Patrick Kelley gave the Executive Committee an update on the status of the IAMP website. The IAMP Secretariat was advised that we would eventually have to upgrade the IAMP website to a more modern content management system. Compared to six months ago, the pressure to do that seems to have lessened and there is no specific date at which time the website content management system will have to have to be updated, although it will have to be done in several years.

Approximately six months ago, the IAMP received a proposal for $33K for these website upgrades.

The most important initial requirement is to define the objectives of the website and what information the IAMP wants to convey. For example, should the website be:

• An electronic brochure or a more active tool for communicating with the membership
• Something for newcomers to IAMP or for members to maintain communication
• A public site and/or a private secure interactive site for members
• A passive site with links where members could go for information or an active site where members would receive emails with regularity with hyperlinks

Before investing in a lot of database software upgrades, decisions need to be made about what the site is to communicate and what its functionality should be, etc.

The Co-chairs were not prepared to give any direction; moreover the IAMP does not currently have the money to spend on expensive upgrades. Major changes will be deferred for the time being.

The EC agreed that the IAMP website will not post unsolicited papers from member academies; but if member academies have a link to their websites, they will send it to Leslie Baer for addition to the IAMP website.

Mother and Child Health InterAcademy Research Network

Guy de Thé presented the Mother-Child Health Research Network established originally under the aegis of IAP, by the French and Swedish Academies of Sciences, and later joined by the Canadian Royal Society. A series of workshops have been organized by the network, focusing on Mother to Child Transmission of HIV, alternatives to Breast Feeding for HIV Infected Mothers, and Kangaroo Mother Care.

An interactive website www.mother-child.org was also developed to facilitate interaction, and to promote collaboration between scientists and clinicians of developing and industrialized countries, by sharing experience, exchange of data, and debate on new issues and findings of interest. All member academies are invited to visit, register and participate in the Network. Dr Perla Santos-Ocampo was in favor of the involvement of the Philippines in the activities of this critical network.

Promotion of health research in developing countries being a critical factor for both health and economic sustainable development, Guy de Thé proposed that IAMP co-sponsor the Mother-Child Health Research Network, with no monetary implications. The Executive Committee unanimously approved the motion.

2004 WHO Ministerial Meeting

Jaime Sépulveda in his new position as Director of the Mexican National Institutes of Health will be the host of the 2004 WHO Ministerial on Health Research in Mexico during November 16-20, 2004. Tikki Pang contacted David Challoner,as Foreign Secretary of IOM and IAMP co-chair, to serve on his advisory committee for the Mexico City activity and he invited both organizations to participate in the meeting. All IAMP member academies will be invited to the Ministerial, but no funds will be available to support travel. The IAMP will be listed as a sponsor for the meeting, but with no funding responsibility. This Ministerial audience will be an occasion to publicize the upcoming release of the DCPP.

Statutes

The intent is to have the Statutes fully approved and endorsed by the EC between now and six months before the IAMP global meeting. The secretariat will send the proposed Statutes to the members so that they can be in a position of approval or amendment at our next global meeting.

The following edits were made to the Statues:

3.1.1 National Academies of Medicine or medical sections of Science Academies whose members are elected on the basis of excellence: Where a country has more than one member academy, only one shall have a vote and this shall be decided by the Co-Chairs of IAMP in consultation with the Academies concerned.

3.1.2 Similar institutions representing various regions of the world: One country will be limited to one vote.

4.4.1 The Co-Chairs of IAMP will be responsible for the functioning of the IAMP Secretariat.

Membership Applications to the IAMP

The CAS has officially applied for membership to the IAMP. Membership was unanimously approved.

Dr. Challoner called for any old or new business.

With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.