World Health Organization
Chair: Claire Kaufmann
Assistant Director: Mike McCarthy
COMMITTEE TOPICS:
Topic A: Drug Marketing and Ethics
The WHO strives to promote safe, equitable, and ethical drug marketing and promotion strategies. Drugs can be safe and proven effective, or they can be experimental and thus potentially unsafe; they can be patented and expensive, or they can be generic and affordable. To ensure safety and consistency, the WHO aims to facilitate and standardize the evaluative methods used by various drug regulatory authorities, the pharmaceutical industry, and any other body involved in the distribution or promotion of drugs. Delegates will discuss pressing concerns regarding medical ethics and marketing tactics found across the global community, with the hope of creating and implementing comprehensive countermeasures.
Topic B: Access to Vaccines
Of the several goals of the World Health Organization, ensuring global access to vaccines is a large one. While inroads have been made, much work remains to be done. The World Health Organization, also known as the WHO or WHA, has several ways to more effectively identify vulnerable communities, provide recommended standards for surveillance of vaccine preventable diseases, and make data available in a consolidated format for each VPDD; but the equitableness of access to vaccines is a problem that has yet to be solved as many barriers remain. The biggest issue is that the most vulnerable people–those with the least access to vaccines–live in poverty and often in conflict-torn areas. However ths isn’t the only issue that prevents access to vaccines. Delegates are encouraged to devise a creative solution in this committee, in order to better guarantee vaccine access to the most vulnerable in our global community.