Civil Society Organizations and Global Health Governance
Public Gala Event
Why Civil Society Matters to Global Health, James Orbinksi
University of Toronto and Médecins Sans Frontières
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
University of British Columbia
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
7:00 - 9:00pm
Janice Stein, the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, will moderate this event. She was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate. She is an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of Alberta and received the Order of Canada.
Rounding out the evening session will be comments by Brett Finlay, an internationally prominent UBC microbiologist who is Peter Wall Distinguished Professor, and active in international scientific cooperation initiatives connected with developing a SARS vaccine (SAVI) and a Gates Grand Challenge.
More about the Speaker
Dr. Orbinski believes in humanitarianism, in citizenship and in actively engaging and shaping the world we live in so that it is more humane, fair and just.
After extensive field experience with MSF (in Somalia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Zaire), Dr. Orbinski was elected MSF's international president from 1998 to 2001, and launched its Access to Essential Medicines Campaign in 1999. In 1999 he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to MSF for its pioneering approach to medical humanitarianism, and most especially for its approach to witnessing.
Dr. Orbinski worked as MSF’s Head of Mission in Goma, Zaire in 1996-97 during the refugee crisis. He was MSF’s Head of Mission in Kigali during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and MSF’s medical co-ordinator in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in the winter of 1994. He was MSF's medical co-ordinator in Baidoa, Somalia during the civil war and famine of 1992-1993. Dr. Orbinski’s first MSF mission was in Peru in 1992.
As international president of MSF, Dr. Orbinski represented the organization in numerous humanitarian emergencies and on critical humanitarian issues in for example, the Sudan, Kosovo, Russia, Cambodia, South Africa, India and Thailand. He has also represented MSF at the UN Security Council, in many national parliaments, and to for example, the WHO, and the UNHCR.
From 2001 to 2004 Dr. Orbinski chaired MSF's Neglected Diseases Working Group, which created the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative ( DNDi). Launched in 2003, the DNDi is a global not-for-profit drug development initiative that develops drugs and other health technologies for diseases largely neglected by profit driven research and development companies. The DNDi now has 20 drugs in development. Its first drug – an anti-malarial – will be available in March of 2007.
In 2003 Dr. Orbinski became a research scientist at St. Michael's Hospital, and in 2005 an associate professor of both medicine and political science at the University of Toronto. One of his co-authored papers on HIV/AIDS treatment adherence was recognized by the Lancet as one of the world’s top 20 medical research papers of 2006.
Dr. Orbinski practices clinical medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital (on a one year leave for 2006-7), University of Toronto, and is part of a team of scholars that is developing a multidisciplinary PhD training program in Global Health. He is also a Senior Fellow at The Centre for International Health, at Massey College, and at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Orbinski received his MD degree from McMaster University in 1990, and held a Medical Research Council of Canada fellowship to study paediatric HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has also worked as an international health consultant for the Canadian Public Health Association in Zambia, and for Street Kids International in Brazil. He completed a Masters degree in international relations at the University of Toronto in 1998 before becoming international president of MSF.
Dr. Orbinski has received many honorary doctorates and awards, including in 1997 the Meritorious Service Cross, Canada’s highest civilian award. This citation reads:
“Chief of Mission to Rwanda with Médecins sans Frontières/
Doctors Without Borders during the Civil War and genocide from April
to July 1994, Dr. Orbinski provided an extraordinary service by delivering
medical assistance and alleviating the suffering of victims, on both sides
of the front line. Unwavering in his efforts, Dr. Orbinski opened the Agha
Khan (King Fayed) Hospital in Kigali, in the middle of a contested area that
often became the target of mortar and machine gun fire. Through example,
he provided inspirational leadership to a multinational team of medical staff
and managed to spur their flagging spirits through the bleakest days of the genocide.”
Dr. Orbinski believes that access to health care and to essential health technologies are critical global health issues today, and most especially for poor people. His research interests focus on 1) access to medicines and health care, 2) medical humanitarianism in war and social crisis, and 3) global health policy.
Since joining St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto, he is a founder and president of Dignitas International, a hybrid academic NGO launched to provide and research community based care, prevention and treatment for people living with HIV in the developing world. Dignitas is now treating over 8000 HIV positive patients, and has over 2000 women, children and men on treatment for AIDS in Malawi. It has trained hundreds of healthcare staff and community based care workers. Its focus is on researching, developing and disseminating a prototype of community-based care. In 2007 Dignitas will begin programs in India and in Cambodia.
Dr. Orbinski is a founding board member of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, and the Steven Lewis Foundation. He is board chair of War Child Canada and Dignitas International, and a founding board member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.
Dr. Orbinski lives in Toronto with his partner and two boys.