Monday 07 October 2024

Productive meetings between WHO officials and FDI members

  • 10 November 2014
  • 12:05
  • IRIMC
  • 0 Comment
  • 1098 View
  • Article Rating
Productive meetings between WHO officials and FDI members
Through a productive meeting between FDI President and WHO Director General, both sides agreed that it was essential to maintain the dialogue in the interests of strategies to combat oral diseases and noncommunicable diseases (...

On 29 October, Dr Tin Chun Wong, FDI President and FDI President-Elect Dr Patrick Hescot had the meeting with World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Dr Margaret Chan and Dr Oleg Chestnov, Assistant Director-General, Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health at the WHO headquarters in Geneva. The discussions were wide-ranging and productive and they all agreed that it was essential to maintain the dialogue in the interests of strategies to combat oral diseases and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

Prior to that meeting, FDI President had series of visits with FDI members beginning in China and ending in Europe by way of Central Asia.

On 10 October she was in Astana in Kazakhstan, where she addressed the opening of the Kazakhstan Dental Conference. The Kazakhstan Stomatological Association is a long-standing and well-regarded friend and member of FDI.

Readers will remember that the Kazakh city of Almaty, formerly called Alma Ata, was the venue for landmark International conference on primary health care. It was there, in 1978, that the Alma-Ata Declaration emerged as a major milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health. It identified primary health care as the key to the attainment of the goal of Health for All. As FDI president pointed out in her opening address, FDI would add its goal of ‘Oral Health for All’

 

"It was also an ideal occasion for me to update members of the Kazakhstan Stomatological Association on various aspects of FDI’s work, and bring an international, overseas dimension to national debate. In particular, I focused on FDI’s contribution to the debate on sugar intake, launched by the World Health Organization in March and the new FDI guidelines for implementing the dental amalgam provisions of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. The Data Hub on Global Oral Health and World Oral Health Day are both projects that need the wholehearted participation of our NDAs. I took the opportunity of my visit to Kazakhstan, and later in the month to Norway, to thank our members for continuing to further FDI goals and thereby increase FDI visibility and efficiency. "She said

 

Dr. Tin Chun Wong made a speech in the opening ceremony of Nordental Dental Exhibition and Congress, which took place in Lillestrøm from 16 to 18 October.

In her address, which was very well received, she highlighted FDI’s contributions at international level, citing examples such as helping place oral diseases on noncommunicable disease agenda, advisory work on the dental amalgam provisions of the Minamata Convention on Mercury and providing reference for dentists worldwide through its Policy Statements.

FDI president had thorough discussion about oral health and related issues in two separate meetings, one with Bjørn Inge Larsen, Secretary of Health and Care Services, the other with Knut-Inge Klepp, Division Director in the Directorate of Health.

It bears mentioning that Norway is associated with a high-quality of life where over 90% of the population visits the dentist regularly and great efforts are made to promote oral health. This does not mean, as my hosts pointed out, a total absence of oral disease, which remains a problem among certain sectors of the population.

FDI World Dental Federation serves as the principal representative body for more than one million dentists worldwide, developing health policy and continuing education programmes, speaking as a unified voice for dentistry in international advocacy, and supporting member associations in global oral health promotion activities. Over the years, it has developed programmes, initiatives, campaigns, policies and congresses, always with a view to occupying a space that no other not-for-profit group can claim.

In other words, FDI is the authoritative, professional, independent, worldwide voice of dentistry.

FDI designate National Liaison Officers (NLO) due to achieve its objectives. Currently this position in Iran is held by Dr. Kaveh Seyedan DDS, MSc, FICD, IRIMC President Councilor of International Affairs.

Dr. Shima Naghavi, Director of International Affairs

 
Rate News :