Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) South Asia held the fourth edition of its Health and Humanity Summit in Colombo, under the theme “Envisioning the Future of Humanitarianism”.
The event brought together policymakers, public health specialists, humanitarian workers, academics and civil society figures from across South Asia. Previous editions have been held in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
What was discussed
Proceedings were organised around three panels: humanitarian and health architecture, women’s leadership in global health and humanitarianism, and healthcare sovereignty and access.
The first examined how humanitarian financing and governance are changing, and what role emerging economies in the Global South might play in humanitarian leadership and decision-making. It was moderated by Dr. Ravi Ranna-Eliya, Executive Director of the Institute of Health Policy in Sri Lanka.
The second focused on the part women play in sustaining health and humanitarian systems, and the structural barriers limiting their advancement into leadership roles. The third addressed regional cooperation on access to medicines, diagnostics, vaccines and health technologies, covering intellectual property, technology transfer and regional manufacturing.
Executive Director of MSF South Asia Parthesarathy Rajendran opened the summit, saying humanitarian action was at a point of change in how crises unfold, how they are financed and who shapes the response, and that the principle that everyone has a right to timely healthcare “regardless of politics, geography, or circumstance” should hold through it.
Three MSF international mobile staff who have worked across multiple country programmes — Dr. Roshni Changalath, Imtiaz Wadud and Dr. Karan Kamble — opened the day with accounts of conditions faced by aid workers and patients in conflict settings.
Speakers and a local launch
Prof. Dr. T. Sundararaman, a physician and health systems specialist, gave the keynote address. Other speakers included Dr. Rajesh Sambhajirao Pandav, the World Health Organization Representative to Sri Lanka; Prof. Imtiaz Hussein of the Independent University, Bangladesh; Nabeela Iqbal, founder of the Sisterhood Initiative; and Prakriti Dhakal, Under Secretary to the Prime Minister of Nepal.
MSF South Asia also launched a local chapter of its “Friends of MSF” initiative, which works with students through university societies.
MSF is an international medical humanitarian organisation that operates on a declared basis of neutrality, impartiality and independence. It has reported on outbreak response and access-to-treatment issues elsewhere this year, including the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo, which it described in May as spreading at a rate no previous outbreak had matched.
