MSF Scientific Day 2012 May 25th – snapshot summary
Who attended?
Online:
MSF Scientific Day online was a global event, watched by 967 people (who made 2275 visits) in 68 countries across 5 continents. In addition the low bandwidth version of the page had over 250 views.
The MSF Scientific Day page was the most viewed page across MSF on May 25th.
Individual posters have been viewed 526 times (by Tues 29th May) average of 24 views per poster; the agenda and abstracts have been viewed 562 times.
All presentations and discussion sessions are now available to view online at until Aug 31st 2012.
Feedback: The stream was complimented on clarity and filming, 'it was like being in the room', but the stream did not work in the Harare mission in Zimbabwe and until 11am a technical glitch meant that slides were not advancing with the stream. Highlights include tweets coming from a viewer in Chad during the mapping presentation based in Chad. MSF tweets during the event were retweeted more than 80 times during the event.
At Royal Society of Medicine
260 people were registered as turning up on the day nearly filling the 300 person venue. 368 had registered in advance to attend. Next year will register until 400 potentially avoiding need for waiting lists, however early registration should be encouraged as we reached capacity very early this year.
Feedback – initial review of evaluation sheets shows overwhelmingly positive ‘highly interesting mix of topics’, ‘best one yet’, ‘broad range of topics very important’. There were a few comments on better poster visibility and a couple of low audio spots in the auditorium.
Programmatic relevance
Digital humanitarianism – a challenge to MSF
The audience were asked to vote at the end of each session on a list of priorities for MSF. Of all the sessions, the digital session was found to be the most relevant and urgent for MSF
Voting results shown below from the digital humanitarianism section - 86% of the audience at the end of the session voted for MSF to move forward to lead and invest in digital technology, 43% as a high and 43% as a medium priority.
The keynote speaker, Paul Conneally of the UN International Telecommunications Union and ex-ICRC/IFRC laid down a challenge to MSF in his talk on “digital humanitarianism”. He described humanitarian organisations as needing disrupters to make them adapt to change or facing becoming "analogue structures in the digital age".
Challenging our programmatic models
Another session that gripped the audience looked at specialised approaches in MSF such as advances in neonatal care and HPV infection and cervical cancer screening/treatment for women with HIV. The audience vote at the end was in favour of MSF catalysing change with innovative programmes and technology. In the same session the application of a one-size fits all context approach was challenged. A presentation on long term follow up of children with SAM suggested the cut-off of 115 for MUAC might be more applicable to the context of displaced populations in sub-Saharan Africa but not so useful in the more stable contexts in India. It was suggested that MSF focuses on children at higher risk and this might lead to development of a more useful model that could be used in policy formulation by the Indian Government to encourage them to do more on this issue. In the discussion session the same presenter called for MSF to focus on better data collection to enable us to do more to challenge policy and models of care. On a similar theme, a survey revealed a shockingly high level of sexual violence in Guatemala city for men as well as women but low uptake of health services. The presenter challenged our model of operation – suggesting we kept an open mind and didn’t apply the African model of women and children being the most vulnerable to all contexts, and also that the ‘sexual violence is an emergency’ approach was not helpful in Guatemala in engaging health providers or patients. He concluded that instead of focusing on sexual violence we should be offering a complete package of care aimed at those most at risk in that context – adolescents and young adults, both male and female.
Individual feedback
Sandra Mutuma of Action Against Hunger UK told us: “From my perspective at Action Against Hunger, we don’t have a medical perspective, and MSF brings that, which supplements what we do in terms of nutrition, and food security and food sanitation, so i think it’s important to have that view that MSF brings.”
Rosie Smith, Journal Development Editor – Global Health, Biomedcentral: ‘I would like to congratulate you on the success of the Scientific Day on Friday. The talks were immensely interesting and it was really great to hear all the valuable research coming out of Médecins Sans Frontières. I would love for Conflict & Health and my other journals to become more involved in publishing the innovative research I heard on Friday.”
Professor Paul Fine of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is an epidemiologist who chaired the session on treating neglected populations “There’s a lot of interesting work going on, a lot of very experienced people who’ve really seen it on the ground (making) very valuable contributions to public health. We heard a presentation today on this new drug AmBisone in the treatment of post-Kala Azar dermal leishmaniasis – I’d never heard of it! Interesting under researched disease.”