Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

Paul Hunt, The Human Rights Centre, University of Essex , United Kingdom

Bhim Pariyar, who grew up on the streets of the capital, Kathmandu, huddled in a corner with other boys like him, all trying to warm themselves around the fire they had made by burning plastic, paper and tyres.

"It's time for fun now," Pariyar told his friends as he took out the packet of dendrite.

"You know, this helps us to get rid of our hunger," explained his friend, 14-year-old Rajen Subba, who fled his home in Jhapa district in southeast Nepal due to grinding poverty and started to work as a rag picker.

Pratap Sharan, Itzhak Levav, Sylvie Olifson, Andrés de Francisco and Shekhar Saxena (eds.)
Geneva, World Health Organization and Global Forum for Health Research, 2007

The Lancet has recently published a series of papers on global mental health. In the series the Lancet expresses a call to action for governments, donors, multilateral agencies and other mental health stakeholders to scale up the coverage of mental health services, especially in low and middle income countries.

Charles W. Schmidt

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Tuesday 10th July 5.00 pm
Professor Graham Scambler
Professor of Medical Sociology, Department of Medicine, UCL
‘Sex Work Stigma as a Health Barrier’
The stigma attached to sex work is ubiquitous, although always a mix of the global and the local, and always embedded in political and social structures (themselves a mix of the global and the local). The capacity of sex work stigma to enhance the vulnerability of female sex workers (FSW) and their clients to disease, to impede their ‘rights’ and to undermine health interventions is well documented. In this paper a lapsed sociological distinction between stigma and deviance is re-presented, and a novel conceptual apparatus comprising notions of felt, enacted and projected stigma and deviance presented. The explanatory potential of this conceptual frame is illustrated empirically and a typology of sex work careers developed. Reference is made in this paper to the author’s own study of migrant FSW from Eastern Europe working in central London, and to the published research of colleagues on FSW in both developed and developing societies.

Location:
This seminar will be held at UCL

A comprehensive archive of public seminars is available online on the website of the International Institute for Society and Health of University College, London. The seminars cover a broad range of topics which Alma Mata members will find interesting and useful.

Topics have included:

Risk, Resilience and Social Integration
Conflict Medicine: A Neglected Challenge
Social Inequalities in Health - New Evidence and Policy Implications

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The aim of this annual short course, now in its third year, is to introduce students to key topics in international mental health, with a focus on policy relevant research in developing countries.
http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/virtual/?path=/international/shortcourse/
The course will focus upon the methods needed to ensure mental health research is sensitive to cultural and health system factors. The course will also stress the methods to make findings implemented in policy, and to consider the applications of methods of intervention research. Lectures, practicals and group work will be used as primary teaching methods. Students will be introduced to key themes and practicals and group work will encourage students to develop research questions and study designs.

description:
This day meeting aims to examine the question of migration and health particularly from a UK perspective and to identify opportunities and challenges in research, policy and service provision for migrant communities.
Topics include:
Migration and health – why does it matter?
Migrant communities in the UK: Current patterns and issues
Migration and health services in the UK- problems and prospects
The health of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK
Migration and communicable disease in the UK
The mental health of migrants in the UK
Learning from migration- the HIV VCT project
The way forward: setting an agenda, building a network
Essay prize presentation, “Does ethnicity in health matter”

Location:
The Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street London, W1G 0AE

description:
Social, Cultural and Economic Determinants of Health
International Perspectives for Global Action
1st International Conference of the journal Public Health
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH
9-11 May 2007 • Lisbon , Portugal
www.publichealth.elsevier.com
FULL PROGRAMME: http://www.publichealth.elsevier.com/programme.htm
Keynote speakers
Sian Griffiths, Chinese University of Hong Kong , China
- Health challenges in China
Michael Marmot, University College London , UK
- Social determinants of health and the Commission on Social Determinants of Health

Location:
Lisbon , Portugal