YAY we’ve all arrived safe and sound Our…

YAY we’ve all arrived safe and sound!

Our delegates are as follows:

SCOPH (Standing Committee on Public Health): Alex Elliott-Green, Beth Hall, Katie Evans (Marrow), Jonathon Gaughran (Marrow)

SCORA (Standing Committee on Reproductive Health and AIDs): Anya Gopfert, Hussein Mohamedbhai

SCOME (Standing Committee on Medical Education): LJ Hughes, Mark Sherlock

SCOPE: (Standing Committee on Professional Exchanges) Charley Peal, Alex Norway

SCORP (Standing Committee on Human Rights and Peace): Charlie Grain

Presidents’ Workshop: Elly Pillavachi

With the entire Medsin-UK delegation now in Jakarta, spirits are high and everyone is feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed in anticipation of the unbelievably exciting 5 days that are to follow. We as a 12 member crew could not be more thrilled to be attending this year’s “Health Equity and Disparity (within MDGs)” themed General Assembly, where we hope to gain a deeper knowledge, exchange ideas with fellow students from over 70 countries and as a body of passionate medical students, move one step closer in becoming a generation of doctors that lead the way in global health.

Last night’s opening ceremony ushered in what is to be a wonderful General Assembly, with a display of Indonesia’s cultural dances and music.7.30am of course came all too early, but our jetlagged grogginess was soon obliterated by the bubbling anticipation to attend our Standing Committees.

SCOME (Standing Committee on Medical Education):

With the celebration of MM11 Opening Ceremony eating well into the night, only a few hours sleep were snatched, but a delightful Indonesian breakfast well and truly compensated. Mark and I (LJ) trotted off to our first ever Standing Committee on Medical Education. Introductions to the group and a series of energizers kick started our SCOME experience and a brief overview of what was to come in the next few days was presented. In groups of 5 we discussed the role of students in medical education, commenting on the context and levels of involvement we as students should have in medical education, how we can keep motivated and the potential impact we aim to elicit on completion of our SCOME sessions.

SCOPH (Standing Committee of Public Health)

Today was a hugely exciting day, in the SCOPH session. The theme of the session may seem mundane at first glance developing a Strategy Plan for SCOPH. True, at first doesn’t sound that exciting however this was a great development with the standing committee and it is the first step to making their activities sustainable.

After initial introduction and energizers, we worked on an issue map of the themes and this was led by the UK delegation facilitated by me, Alex Elliott-Green, who discussed sustainable campaigning and the other by Jonathan Gaughran on collaboration and support of activities. The other delegates had so many insightful comments and together we contributed the first steps to developing this strategic plan.

We left the session motivated and enthused after meeting loads of amazing people and being introduced to new ideas and we are all looking forward to tomorrow in which we are all facilitating small working groups on 1) International Advocacy, 2) Pharmaware and 3) Sustainability in Activities. These small working groups feed directly into our objects.

The social activity on schedule was an Indonesian Cultural Night, displaying any array of the impressive multicultural talents we have at this GA. We all let our hair down and celebrated the closure of day 1 with our new friends!