Internationally respected global health and pandemics scholar Professor Lawrence Gostin will deliver the 2009 Miegunyah Public Lecture at the University of Melbourne on Wednesday, September 16.

Professor Gostin, the Melbourne Law School’s Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow, will discuss the use of international law to advance world health in the lecture, Meeting the Basic Survival Needs of the World’s Least Healthy People: Towards a Framework Convention on Global Health. 

“The health of the world’s population is fundamentally important, yet the international health landscape is fragmented,” says Professor Gostin.  “Activities do not align with country priorities and the health gap between the world’s rich and poor is unconscionable.

“No state, acting alone, can insulate itself from major health hazards. The determinants of health – for example pathogens, air, food, water or even lifestyle choices - do not originate solely within national borders.  Health threats inexorably spread to neighboring countries, regions, and even continents.

“It is for this reason that safeguarding the world’s population requires cooperation and global governance, and as a result, it is vital to explore new strategies for meeting the basic survival needs of the world’s least healthy people.”

Professor Gostin is a leading authority on pandemics (including swine flu), public health and global health.

He is the Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and the chair of a National Commission advising the US Government about ‘Preparation for a Mass Disaster’.

He is also Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Center for Law & the Public’s Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities - a Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

While in Australia, he will complete a report with the University of Melbourne’s Nossal Institute into what the Australian Government needs to do to advance its work on international development assistance for health. 

EVENT DETAILS:
Miegunyah Public Lecture 2009
Professor Lawrence Gostin
“Meeting the Basic Survival Needs of the World’s Least Healthy People”
Wednesday 16 September 2009 from 6pm
Theatre GM15, Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham St Carlton.