Monir Islam is the Director of the Dept. of Making Pregnancy Safer at the WHO. He qualified from Dhaka University, Bangladesh and received a MPH from the Royal Tropical Inst. in the Netherlands. He worked in a rural health complex in Bangladesh before going to Botswana in 1981. There he worked for ten years as a Medical Officer in District Hospitals, as Hospital Superintendent of a District Hospital, and as a Senior District Medical Officer responsible for all Primary Health Care programmes. In 1991, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands as a Public Health Consultant advising the Ministry on their bilateral and multilateral contribution to health and population-related programmes and projects. In 1992 he was invited to join the Global Programme on AIDS in the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland and was responsible for the Sexually Transmitted Diseases programme. Thereafter he joined WHO's Reproductive Health Technical Support Programme as Chief of Family Planning and Population. In 2000 he became the Co-ordinator of Development of Norms and Tools in the Dept. of Reproductive Health and Research in WHO. In 2002, he was appointed as Director, Family and Community Health in the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia. Dr Islam took up his current post in 2005.

November 6^th key topic:

The challenge of fetal growth restriction - the epidemiology, causes and management

Plenary lecture by Mark Hanson: “Fetal Growth: Evolutionary History and Future Consequences”.

Professor Mark Hanson is the founding Director of the Inst. of Developmental Sciences at the University of Southampton, UK, Director of the Div. of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease in the University’s School of Medicine and British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences. Mark’s research concerns several aspects of development and health, ranging from the molecular epigenetic mechanisms underlying the effects of developmental environment on phenotype, to population studies aimed at early identification of risk.  He is interested in evolutionary medicine and the reintroduction of a developmental perspective into human biology and medicine.  His recent books include Mismatch – Why our world no longer fits our bodies (2006).  He has appeared on a variety of TV and radio programmes, in many newspaper and magazine articles and on public lecture/understanding of science platforms.

November 7^th key topic:

Excellence of care: the best evidence in prevention and management

Plenary lecture by Stephen Pratt: “Patient Safety Issues in Obstetrics”

Dr. Pratt is director of Quality Improvement for the Dept. of Anesthesia and Critical Care, clinical director of Obstetric Anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and an assistant professor in anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. He is one of the authors of the curricula for teaching team training on Labor and Delivery, and was instrumental in developing clinically relevant outcomes for assessing and quality of obstetric care. Dr. Pratt has been invited to speak nationally and internationally on the topics of patient safety and team training in obstetrics, and the work they have performed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have received several regional and national awards. Dr. Pratt sits on many hospital, regional and national committees related to patient safety and is chair of the Patient Safety committee of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.