WISH to focus locally on three major health issues in 2017

The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) will be focusing on autism, dementia and precision medicine among other topics for its local community outreach in 2017.  
“We will be focusing to help raise awareness among the local public on topics such as dementia and autism.We will collaborate with World Health Organisation (WHO) to address the challenges in dementia in the region immediately after the WISH Summit 2016,” Egbert Schillings, CEO, WISH told Gulf Times.
“The day after the summit, we will be hosting a meeting with technical assistance from World Health Organisation on the challenges posed by dementia to health systems in the region with representatives from several countries in the region,” he explained.
“We will be convening the dementia leads from the Eastern Mediterranean Region to support regional and global collaboration on a health condition that will likely touch all of us during our lifetime, either as patients or caregivers for a loved-one diagnosed with dementia.
“The demographic scenario is different in each country. In the Middle East, the demographics is still quite young. But the idea for any health system is to get ahead of a challenge, rather than wait until it becomes a crisis. We have a great working relationship with the department of mental health and substance abuse at the WHO, under the leadership support from Dr Shekhar Saxena, director, Department of Mental Health and substance abuse at WHO,” he maintained.
“We plan to have a lot of local programmes along the lines of our recent dementia community event with Hamad Medical Corporation. We were encouraged by the interest on the part of the local community for translating more of our policy research into practical public education and awareness-raising,” he noted.
According to the official, WISH has been very fortunate to work with great organisations locally and globally to create impact together. “We will continue the collaborations with our existing partners such as with The Carter Center on mental health journalism and our partners here in Doha and in the US to provide patient safety training to students and faculty of the local health sciences colleges,” he added.