Back to Executive Committee

First speech Secretary General Jan de Maeseneer Secretary General Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great honour for me to be the new Secretary General of the Network: Towards Unity for Health (The Network: TUFH) and I would like to thank all of you for your trust in my abilities to fulfil this job. I hope I will not disappoint you. I am aware that it is a big challenge to succeed Prof. Arthur Kaufman, who has shaped The Network: TUFH towards the organisation it is today. Arthur, I would like to thank you for your leadership in the past eight years and I know that I can count on your expertise whenever problems arise. The first time I visited a Network-Conference was in 2001 in Londrina (Brasil) and I still remember the site-visit there. We went to a children's clinic in a deprived area of Londrina and were confronted with a huge number of underweight children. Students of the school of health sciences visited all families in the neighbourhood to register health problems, they provided health education and advice to the mothers, and followed-up the families. It was an excellent example of a COPC-approach ("Community Oriented Primary Care"). The second thing I remember from this conference was that this was very different from the others I used to visit. I had to participate in a poster-session and - as I had not read the instructions carefully - I showed up with overhead sheets. Gerard and Pauline made immediately clear that there could be no overhead-projection at all and that I had to fix my sheets on the wall… That is the way one learns how to behave in Network: TUFH Conferences. The third thing that was special were the people: at a Network: TUFH conference every participant has a story to tell, that inspires you. If you allow me, I would like to elaborate a little bit on the newly formulated Mission Statement, that we have adopted some minutes ago. I personally find it very helpful because it is not always simple to answer the question: "What is the Network?". The statement makes clear that our primary base are academic health professions' institutions and other organisations, but that our strategy is to create partnerships with stakeholders in society: communities, health services, health care providers and their professional organisations and with other sectors in society (environment, socio-cultural, work,…). This strategy is important to contribute to the equity-objective, that we have formulated in the mission statement. The importance of this objective can not be over-estimated. Today, we still face huge inequalities in health. Just one example: consider three children: one African, one South-Asian and one European. At birth each one, representing the country average, has life expectancy of less than 50 years. The African and South Asian figures come from 1970, the European figure from 1901. Over the last century, life expectancy for the European child increased by about 30 years and is still rising. Between 1970 and 2000, the South Asian's life expectancy rose by 13 years, while for the child in sub-Saharan Africa, during the same period, life expectancy rose by 4 months. Apart from these inequalities between countries, there are still major inequalities within countries: the evidence shows that there is a social gradient in health from top to bottom of the socio-economic spectrum. Therefore I think it is important that The Network: TUFH is attentive to the social determinants of health and that we assess how our actions and activities contribute to more equity ("an equity-check"). The mission statement defines clearly what the domains are, we are active in: community-oriented education, research and service. Those three domains should interact continuously and illustrate the social accountability of the institutions we are working in. It is clear that our historical and focused interest for health professions education will not be lost in this vision. On the contrary, it should be enhanced as education (and human resources management) would become a strategic entry point of choice for health development if unity of purpose and action is shared with other stakeholders. The theme of this conference in Kampala "Human resources in health: recruitment, education and retention" is a good illustration. In the past six years, I have learned a lot from The Network: TUFH. I am grateful for the inspiration The Network: TUFH gave me, for the friends that I met here. In the next 4 years, I will do my best, together with the Executive Committee and the Maastricht-secretariat, and with the help of all of you, to develop The Network: TUFH (e.g. towards Eastern Europe and China) and to take care of its sustainability. I will use what I have learnt from so many people that inspired me (my friends at the community health center in Ledeberg, the staff of the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Health Care at, my institution Ghent University, all the stakeholders I work with in policy and society and last but not least my wife Anita and my two sons Pieter and Daan), to serve The Network: TUFH. I am sure together with all of you, we can make a difference. Thank you so much. Kampala, September 16, 2007