Workshop Convenes All Eight Countries in UNICEF’s Regional Office for South Asia
Participants in the June 2024 workshop included representatives from all of the countries in UNICEF’s Regional Office for South Asia.
In early June, delegations from all eight countries in UNICEF ROSA—the Regional Office for South Asia—convened in Kathmandu for a three-day workshop on severe childhood-onset noncommunicable diseases.
During the workshop—which UNICEF ROSA hosted in collaboration with the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, one of two co-secretariats of the NCDI Poverty Network—participants discussed strategies for integrating these severe conditions into health system interventions and noncommunicable disease and child health policies in South Asia.
Many of the challenges the participants discussed were based on the harsh realities of health financing. It was noted, for example, that although development assistance for noncommunicable diseases has grown over the past three decades, spending on severe conditions has not always kept pace with the burden they cause. And pediatric noncommunicable diseases are especially underfunded.
Striking an optimistic note, representatives from three of the countries—Bangladesh, India, and Nepal—shared the successes they’ve already achieved with PEN-Plus.
“Our colleagues from Sangwari in Chhattisgarh, India, and the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health were able to lead with their experiences,” said Neil Gupta, policy director for both the NCDI Poverty Network and the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity. “There was a real enthusiasm among the other countries to get PEN-Plus started or to do more of the technical-level work needed to ensure that childhood NCDs are included in their policy frameworks.”
Photo and video courtesy of the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia
