HIV/AIDS has had a tremendous impact on African health systems. In some cases, entire generations have been heavily impacted. In 2006, Ethiopia decided to start a new approach, one of universal health care to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We talked with Yibeltal Assefa of the Medical Services Directorate, Federal Ministry of Health of Ethiopia.

Following her presentation on Capacity Building for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Humanitarian Emergencies in the Gaza Strip, Claire Colliard, Founder and Executive Director, Centre for Humanitarian Psychology, Switzerland agreed to do a short interview with the Conference Reporters Team. She described her work in the Gaza Strip, where she is putting in place a mapping of the mental health systems in the region.

How can the leading pharmaceutical companies be convinced to join the Medicines Patent Pool Initiative? When can production of the first new therapies by generic drug makers be expected? What would be a reasonable price? We talked to Ellen t`Hoen of UNITAID, Geneva, an organisation seeking to increase access to treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, about these issues and his participation in the Geneva Health Forum.

This was a key plenary session on how to make the best of a bad situation. The speakers discussed how crisis response could help form effective and sustainable health services and how using the climate change agenda as a vehicle may help achieve this.

The huge range of tropical diseases, which come under the umbrella of 'Neglected Diseases', are often masked by malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS in developing countries. Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT/sleeping sickness), Viseral Leishmaniasis (VL), primary health care (PHC) in regions of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Kenya, were some of the main issues discussed in this session.

The Millennium Development Goals call for universal access to health, including essential medicines. Some 4.8 billion people are currently estimated to benefit from access to essential medicines, leaving some 2 billion still unable to access them. The Accountability and Access to Essential Medicines: Global Perspectives session examined some factors impacting access to medicines and their availability. The impact of the recent global recession was put under the microscope, as was the pharmaceutical industry's performance, based on a new indexing and ranking tool. The differences in availability of medicines for chronic versus acute diseases were also examined. Finally, Thailand provided a case study of how policy development can increase access. The session emphasised the need for a participatory approach, involving all stakeholders, in increasing access to essential medicines.

With an increasing number of humanitarian crises involving Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) or refugees in non-camp settings, aid needs to be increased and expanded into host communities where they settle, mostly in urban areas. This session will present the tremendous challenges that refugees, IDPs and migrants encounter in host communities, particularly in urban settings, and will propose strategies to address their health needs.

Major lessons learned from the recent H1N1 flu pandemic were presented by representatives of the WHO, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the pharmaceutical industry. Topics discussed were the importance of the revised International Health Regulation (IHR) in the sharing of information between governments, the necessity of communicating directly with the public and crisis management during the acute phase of the health crisis, and improved risk management models. Topics of ethics in pandemic preparedness among migrant communities and consequences for host governments were also examined.

Despite ashes of the erupting Icelandic volcano, the Geneva Health Forum has decided to maintain its activities and to run the 3rd edition of the conference, starting Monday 19 April 2010, as originally planned.