Photo Gallery: UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia Workshop

Anu Gomanju, a public health officer at the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health and a Voices for PEN-Plus advocate, shares her experiences as a person living with rheumatic heart disease.

Among the principal organizers of the workshop were, from left, Dr. Raoul Bermejo, a health specialist at the UNICEF headquarters in New York City; Arjanne Rietsema, a health specialist at the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia; and Dr. Neil Gupta, policy director for the NCDI Poverty Network.

Dr. Yogesh Jain, a public health physician with Sangwari in Chhattisgarh State in India, describes his organization’s experiences with PEN-Plus.

Participating in the Policymaker Panel Discussion were, from left, Ministry of Health representatives from Bangladesh (Dr. Sajib Roy), India (Dr. Shobhna Gupta), and Nepal (Dr. Poma Thapa).

Among those participating in the June workshop were, from left, Sandeepa Karki, an NCDI specialist at the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health; Anu Gomanju, a public health officer at the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health and a Voices for PEN-Plus advocate; Dr. Neil Gupta, policy director for the NCDI Poverty Network; Bishwash Maharjan, a programme officer at the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health; and Yamuna Chhetri, a programme officer at the Kathmandu Institute of Child Health.

This classic photographic forced perspective makes Dr. Raoul Bermejo look like he’s literally holding up UNICEF’s work on children and NCDs with his hand. As a health specialist for UNICEF, though, the reality matches the illusion.

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.

Photos courtesy of the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia. Read the story here.