We must be ready for possible conflict with Russia, Norwegian Defence Minister. Beyond Arald Graham, Minister of Defence of Norway has urged the country to be ready for a possible conflict even after the end of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine. Graham stressed that sprouts of democracy were destroyed in Russia and nothing indicates Russia will become like us. Those few Russians who are trying to protest are being thrown behind bars or sent to the war. There, they are being used as cannon fodder. There is no opposition there, no freedom of media, no civil society which would be allowed to at least somehow counter the regime, which is growing more and more authoritarian, Graham said. Graham stressed that such a Russia will stay with us for a long time. Therefore, even after the war against Ukraine ends, the threat will remain. We must be ready that Russia may review its plans and where it deploys its forces in response to Finland and Sweden's NATO membership, the Norwegian Defence Minister stated. In connection with this, he stressed the importance of the increase of investments into the defence, training and improvement of compatibility of Norwegian armed forces with the Allies in NATO. The military from many other countries have made similar statements lately. Boris Pistorius, Federal Minister of Defence of Germany, said that Russia might attack a NATO country in five to eight years. Mikael Baiden, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Sweden and Karl Oscar Bolin, Swedish Minister of Defence, stated that all Swedish citizens must be ready for war.


Hello everyone, welcome to NPTEL course on groundwater hydrology and management. This is week 10, lecture one. In the past weeks, we have been looking at the major concepts of groundwater. And then we looked at specific data that we use to understand the concepts of groundwater. And now we are in a stage where we can collect the groundwater data and use it for our understanding. On that note, this week we will be focusing on more groundwater data availability websites and see how we could use it in our assessments. Since this is a introductory course, we will be showing how to first use this groundwater data. And then in a downloaded fashion, how you download it and use it. And then we will look at how we can put it into a conceptual model in week 11. So first let's do a recap of week nine and how it is linked to week 10, which is this week. In the week nine, we looked at a very important data for understanding groundwater aquifers and aquifer distances, how it is placed, the boundaries, etc. We looked at bore holes, bore holes and bore log data. And that is the deep aquifer kind of drilling where you drill and then you take a core out. A core is a sample which comes out after drilling and then or while drilling and then you have layers in the core. That layers were used to stratify, create multiple layers of the aquifer so that we know how water moves between the layers. We looked at WRIS data portal, which is the Indian Water Resource Information System. So it's normally called India WRIS. WRIS standing for Water Resource Information System. Sometimes the website does have some lag or it has some issues while pulling up the maps. So don't worry, just revisit it often a couple of days, you will get the data. The link is correct. What link I'm going to show today is going to be correct. But sometimes you may not have data populating because of the hardware, software maintenance, etc. So this we looked at WRIS groundwater data for stratification. And then there are more data in the portal that we'll be exploring in week 10. We may not be able to get in depth of each and every data that is stored in this website. However, my duty is to introduce these concepts so that you can slowly build an understanding for these by linking it to the weeks before we had this class. So in week 10, we'll be looking at aquifer 2D properties. Okay, so basically a core was giving you a 3D layering, right? You have at one point, how is it layered differently? And then two points you can take for a 3D visualization. But there are some properties which is 2D that we'll be looking at in the aquifer 2D property tab. Then we would slowly look into the most important data that is the groundwater level data. And then we'll also look at some state data. So there are central groundwater board data and then state groundwater board data, which we'll be looking at. So the fund comes from the central government for water management, water resources. That goes to central groundwater board for monitoring groundwater resources. And then we have the state agencies that monitor the state water bodies. Sometimes there is one district with two wells monitoring the same water level, whereas one is for the state and one is the central groundwater board. So mostly these data should talk to each other, but they are also standalone. I'll go through the examples. Then we'll look at the groundwater resource estimation tab, which talks about how to estimate groundwater resources, the water budgets. We'll look at groundwater resource availability, the current availability, the past availability, and some hydroclimatic data. We may spill this into week 11 because it is a very important chapter. So if there is a week 11, then we will finish off with a conceptual model which requires all this data. And this helps us in mapping this aquifer boundaries, understanding why these boundaries are made. And once the understanding for the boundaries are made, you are able to incorporate it in your water management plans. This year is the UN Water Resources Water Day is given to the groundwater focus. And the theme is making the invincible visible. So whatever you're learning in this course over these weeks is very important for this year, 2022, of which 22nd March is celebrated as a World Water Day. And this specific year is devoted to groundwater. So I'm very proud that all of you are taking this course because you are learning something that is not fully taught in classes. Okay, so this is how the website looks like. I will pull up the website to show you quickly. We will be looking at the website which is IndiaWRIS slash aquifer. And this is the aquifer properties that will come. You will go into this India Water Resource Information System depending on your internet connectivity and the connectivity at the WRIS website. There will be some lags. So please adjust and let me now show you the IndiaWRIS website. So what you see here is the IndiaWRIS website. We are back on there and we go to water data, go to groundwater data. So I'm not clicking, you just have to move your mouse along this tabs and it will populate. So go to water tab, don't click and then come down, each one will populate. If you're taking the rural water resource management course, you will be looking at these other tabs. But since we are looking at groundwater in this course, let's go into groundwater and then move right. You'll go into the exploration details of lithologs which we saw in the last week's class. In this week's class, first class, we will look at aquifer 2D. So I've clicked it and as I said, depending on your internet speed connectivity, it will take some time, let it populate. Now it has populated. You can move the mouse to the center and then zoom out to show the whole India page. Now you can see it. Let's start from the right. The right gives you the manual or what each one is. You step by step, homepage module, zoom in, zoom out. As I said, you can zoom in, zoom out using your mouse, the default layers, etc. We'll go through all these in class now. And you can print and all these would be updated regularly. What is the base map you want, all these things. So I'm going to move this to the side a little bit. See if you move this to the side, then there's more space for the other contents to come in. So that's what I did and I'm just moving this so that the India map can be big. And you can also keep this to the side if needed. This is plus is to zoom in, zoom out. And then you could rearrange them back or if you want the table, you can click that. Okay, so let's start with the base map. If you click the base map, you get what is behind the aquifer mapping. So what this page gives you is the 2D, not the depth, the XY plane of the groundwater. What type of aquifers are there and why are they called, how much area, those kind of things. So for that it is important to understand the base layer, underneath layer, which shows you the different boundaries. So the base layer can be dark, imagery, etc. If you have slow internet, always use streets. Do not use these other layers. For example, I'll show you the imagery. It is the real time image from satellites. You can see the green, color, brown, color, etc. But that takes a lot of internet speed. So for the best thing, you can use a street map, which is a static map. And you can do that. So again, click on the base map, it will become small. Okay, and then the print user guide, everything is there. You can create a basin-wise map or you can create this arrow mark and push the legend to the side. Now you can see the whole of India. Or you can do a basin. For example, administrative is your state boundaries or district boundaries. Let me focus on Maharashtra where IIT Bombay is. I'm zooming in. So now it is a state boundary. Sooner you will see the district boundaries if needed. I'll have to turn it on. Okay, and then you can select a state if you want to focus on better. For example, let's say Chandigarh and the whole map will shift to Chandigarh. And this data is also getting populated. Okay, good. So let's do back for full India. Okay, if you want the full of India, you can just zoom out. And if you zoom out, you can see that as this map, the 2D map is getting populated. You'll see other data also change. Still, this is Chandigarh because of this, you can click the X mark, it will go off. And then this will slowly do to India. Now the legend has come back to India. And if you go to India scale, this legend will stay. Now, yeah. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the layers, which is very important for Acre for 2D mapping. Okay, the first is the basin boundary. We have looked at what is a basin. The basin is the watershed, et cetera, et cetera. And you know that I've taught you in this class that your groundwater need not follow the basin. So this is like an IE, an IE, which if has a cut, which means it's closed. Okay, if you want to activate that layer, just click the IE and the basin is going to get activated. Now you can see the boundaries as basins. Okay, so if I close this, now this becomes back to the district or state boundaries. Okay, and these boundaries can be, the basin boundaries can be CWC, which is your Central Water Commission. And different boundaries are there, administrative boundaries, aquifer system boundaries. What I'm going to do is I'm going to click this, turn off the basin. Now you can see the basin is gone. Okay, administrative, I'm going to take it off because no point of having watershed and administrative on an aquifer. But aquifer system we need. So that is where you can see the different colors of the aquifer and how it is getting populated. On this side, if you see the pie chart is there to show what is the different aquifers present and how much are there. And clearly as we explained in class, alluvium is high and the hard rock aquifers is the most. The hard rocks can be further divided into basalt, niece complex, nieces, granite, et cetera. So all these would be clubbed together as hard rock aquifers, whereas alluvium is around 30% in India. Okay, the percentage is actually given up. You can see that total percentage is around 30% 29.71. So I was at 30%. The hard rock is 60%. Okay, so what you could see here is I'm going down and as you can zoom in. Okay, I'm going to zoom in to let's say Mumbai, Maharashtra region. You can see that the blue is the basalt layer and then the orange is the laterite layers. So along the western guts, you have a particular aquifer. And then on the other side, you have different aquifers. Here, the numbers are for whole India. You can see it is for whole India. Even if you zoom in, it will not change. So when you change the boundary at the bottom, pick a state, then it changes. Okay, good. So what else can you see? You can see boundaries. You can see the aquifer systems. If I close this, the legend goes off the eye. If I close it, I need it. So I'm going to take it up. Okay, then you can see that is one property. So aquifer system, what aquifer it is, this one property, 2D property. The next one is the aquifer depth. Okay, so how deep is the aquifer? Is it shallow, intermediate or very deep? This is done for certain states. So you can see that only four or five states are being done. So to see it, you can zoom out of India. And depending on your internet, it takes time. So society's internet is here. It is coming pretty fast. You could see Kerala is done. Tamil Nadu is done. And other regions are done. Okay, but not Maharashtra, etc. Let me go to Tamil Nadu, but Tamil Nadu is here. And I'm going to zoom in to Tamil Nadu. You could see that along the coast, it is shallow. Shallow aquifers, unconfined aquifers. But in most of the key districts and along the dry side of the western guards, the rain shadow region of the western guards, it is pretty deep, intermediate. So the units are meters below groundwater level. So ground level. So you have the ground and meters below. So you have to go in the red, 150 at least meters down. That is really, really big. Okay, and it's not good for an aquifer system. So understand this, that you need to also know the spread of the aquifer on the top to be, but also how deep is, do you have to go for the aquifer? All these are taken from your bore logs, little logs. I'm going to close this, but you can also see like if you can open it, there's different depths that you have. So for example, if I can open this eye and only keep Tamil Nadu, if I want to see Tamil Nadu, I have to close everything else. Okay. And slowly the internet is also going to show you only this. Good. So I'm going to close this and then the arrow mark you see, you can move up or down. Okay. If you close it, then you have more space to put these data. Then come down to the aquifer thickness. So depth is depth to the aquifer, but how thick is the aquifer? Okay, the first water is aquifer depth, but then how thick is it? It could be very shallow, like maybe five meters below the ground. But if it is not thick, then the volume is not there. Remember volume is a three-dimensional. Okay. So I'm going to see what are the different states they have done. And let's focus on Tamil Nadu because we've already looked at Tamil Nadu for one study. So if you click it, you can see this small line moving on the top. That is the processing and the internet that is taking time. Okay. Good. So now I've done for Tamil Nadu. What you could see is the aquifer thickness is very thin in most parts of Tamil Nadu. That is why there is a lot of groundwater exploitation. Since the thickness is low, a lot of pumps are put and water is taken out. If the thickness is good, then some wells is enough. One farm can have one well and it could suffice. But since it is not enough, a lot of people are putting more and more wells to take the water out. Okay. So the thickness is given by less than 20 meters below the ground, 20 to 25, 65, 20 and 120. If it is 120, think about it. It's a big aquifer. Okay. And water can be stored thickness. So you're coming down, which is fine. I'm just going to draw it for you. Okay. See if this is your ground level and you're coming down, which is your depth to the aquifer and then how thick is the aquifer? If it is very thin, then even though you are very shallow, easily accessing the water, you cannot extract more because the water is only this much thin. But in Tamil Nadu, you could see this is where there is more water. Okay. So all this would have a lot of water. And mostly it is because it is alluvial, whereas water is being transported by the streams and then the sediments are deposited as alluvial. Okay. Okay. Good. So moving on. Now, let's look at the differences, why the differences can happen. See, this is not a property that would change because of use. The previous one, aquifer depth. The depth to go to the aquifer can change if you take too much water out. If you take too much water out, then what happens? You have water depletion. And so your thickness is reduced. I'm sorry, the depth reduces, right? Here, the thickness of the aquifer which can store water is a stationary property. There is some disturbances you can do, compaction, drilling and all those things. But mostly the aquifer thickness is there. It is a natural material. If water is there or not, it's a second question. Okay. So thickness is there. So what it shows here is this is very thin. The groundwater potential is not much. Even if you put wells, even water comes, it won't be enough because it is thin. It is a small bank account. However, these have really good amount of water. And that is because it has a very thick aquifer. Even though you have to go deep, you can get more water out because the aquifer is deep and thick. So you can justify putting money into accessing this water. Okay. So I'll close this aquifer thickness also. There's one more property we need to look, aquifer material. Okay. And there is aquifer material. I'm going to click it on and it is populating. You could see that there is different materials for the aquifer. Let me see if I can put this down. Okay. Here it is, the legend. So the star marks will give you the legend. What you see here is the aquifer material, which is the, not the top material. The top is where we saw granite, the 2D surface, you know. And here is the old name for the geology name for the aquifer. How much, what material was it formed? And that actually disintegrates or weathers down into the aquifer type. Okay. So the aquifer material and then aquifer type. The aquifer material here, for example, is in this region, you have crystalline rocks. Now the crystalline rocks would weather, break down and then become hard rock aquifers. So if I turn on the aquifer system, see I'm going to turn it on. And what is happening here? This is basalt. So basalt is the aquifer system, whereas the type of rock, the type of rock present in the aquifer is your aquifer material. Okay. So that is the difference between aquifer systems and aquifer materials. It might be slightly confusing to understand that basalt is also a material, right? It is a rock. However, the rock came from a geologic setting and that geology setting is the aquifer material. So you have an aquifer material. It is the parent material. It starts to weather. It starts to break down and then another material is formed. Okay. So this is called a parent material. And then the other material, which is the recent material is where water stores. Let me draw a quick diagram for you. For example, you have, yeah. So this is your ground and this is the parent material. Okay. So here, for example, crystalline rocks. The crystalline rocks would be weathering to form a aquifer type. And that aquifer type is basalt in this region. Basalt and laterites we saw for Tamil Nadu. So I hope I'm clear. This is aquifer material as older, older material, very, very deep. Very, very, very deep like geology. And then these are your aquifer types. Okay. So today we have seen the aquifer material. Okay. And type of aquifer materials are these. Okay. So you have seen one, two, three, four, five. Only for some states they have given it, not for all states. So if I zoom out to the whole of India, you could see that not all states actually is trying to get it, but it's not there. Okay. The internet also has a lot of data. Yeah. Okay. So with this, I think I've covered the aquifer 2D data that is available. You could download this data as a chat. As I said, when you download it, for example, this data I need. Okay. Let me first turn this on so that we can have some data here. Okay. So if things don't switch on, sometimes just refresh it. It will come up. Okay. So I'm going to go to the side and I want to show you that this is the data I want to take, the principle aquifer systems in India. If you want only one state, as I told you, go to unit-wise selection, click it, select the state you want, and then take it. Let's say I'm going to do Tamil Nadu. Okay. Slowly give it time and it has come up. Okay. So Tamil Nadu and click this button to go down. Okay. So this data has been selected. You see the pink line, and this has been also updated. So alluvium is, you have a thickness, you have other data. See for all India, these data didn't come. Why? Because all India, these explorations have not been done. Only for some states it has been done. And this is where you have the physical property, specifically we've covered yield, transmissivity we covered, fracture, encounter some advance things are there. The thickness we did, aquifer type we did, aquifer system we did, all these we've done. Okay. So the legend is given. So for the coloring, let me close this. So you can see the coloring and that is given the legend here. And the shape is given, the pie chart. You can download this pie chart as a PG and CSV. CSV, you don't get a chart, but you get columns so that you can make different graphs. Okay. Or input it into the model that we're going to show the next class. And you can download this. It'll ask, are you any of these? Just give, for example, most of you are students. You can put student, put your name, let's say pen and my name, put your email, and then submit it will download. Okay. Good. So you don't have to have an account, but be careful what details you give as in your student and other things. They want to know how many students are using it. Right. So that's why we approach correctly, giving you a details. Correct. Give you details correctly. And you have any other questions you can go down here to the manual and look at how to download the data. What is what is that? What is that material? So I'm not reproducing these into my slides because all the data is given here. All the writing is given here. You can also download all of this as a manual by clicking here and click. It'll open as a PDF, like a book. You can use the book. It's free open source. See, it doesn't PDF book. Okay. Good. I think we have covered the act of a 2d tab. The others are user guide print. You can also print the page, what page you want. I would recommend you to download it and then print it from your system, rather than printing a page like this, because then you'll have control of what you want to show, not all the details. Okay. So with this, I would like to conclude today's lecture where we looked at WRIS data for act of a 2d properties, especially the XY properties on the surface act per type and then also the act of a depth material. How do you zoom into a particular state? If you look in here, you can also zoom in more. As and when you zoom in, the names also will come. Okay. The names of the special materials or act of a type, whatever you've chosen. Okay. And some background information of your districts. So how do you want to export it as a layout or as a map and do you want to export as an image? All these has been given in the export tab or print tab. Okay. You can also put an address here to choose a location. For example, you can put it if it searches. Yes, it does. Okay. So it will go to where I'm taking this lecture now. Okay. And it zooms in too much. So you have to zoom out a little bit to see where it is. And you can see here it is Mumbai, Maharashtra. Be very careful. It is a very sensitive. So slowly, slowly move it. See if you move one, the other one, the other one. Okay. And then now you can see that. Okay. This is IIT, Bombay. It has this type of problem. So anyone who's going to ask you these details, you can quickly go to this website and give them the details about the sacrifice and properties. With this, I would like to stop today's class. I will meet you in the next class. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello you people, this is Marc. If you haven't watched the first episode of The First Conditional, I suggest watching it first before you watch this one. If you have watched it, then you are in the right place. Let's look at the examples then. I'm going to buy a new TV next month if I earn enough. If you see her over the weekend, tell her I say hello. If you can get me a ticket, I'll go to the concert with you. You can open the window if you're hot. Before you start a new job, you should learn more about it. Until I know what's really happening, I won't tell them. In this lesson, we're going to look at, again, The First Conditional. But this time, we're going to focus on other versions of The First Conditional. So stay tuned. So this is the second episode of The First Conditional. Why did I make two episodes? You will see now we have six other forms or variations of The First Conditional. But what is a First Conditional? A First Conditional sentence is when you want to talk about a result that could happen if a condition happens first. You know that in a conditional sentence, we need the condition and the result, or the result and the condition. Usually, this is the formula. If, when, as soon as, plus subject, plus present simple. In the condition part of the sentence. And the result, we have subject, then we have will, and then the infinitive. Let me remind you that there are a lot of variations. And in this lesson, we're going to actually talk about them. So the first one, let's look at the formula. If, as soon as, when, etc., plus subject, plus present simple. The second part, which is the result, we have the subject, plus going to, plus infinitive. So we don't need will. We replace it with going to. Let's look at the examples. I'm going to buy a new TV next month if I earn enough. If I earn enough money, I mean. So I could even say, if I earn enough money, I'm going to buy a new TV next month. Another example with going to, if you don't give that back, she's going to call the police. So we replaced will with going to. Now the second variation of the first conditional, if, as soon as, when, etc., plus subject, plus present simple. And then for the result part of the sentence, as infinitive. The first part is the condition in this case. If you see her over the weekend, say hello. Say hello would be the imperative. We need just imperative because the imperative doesn't have a subject. Don't allow your children to go out. As you can see, this is a negative imperative. So don't allow. So do not plus the verb infinitive. Don't allow your children to go out. And then the condition part would be if they don't eat all their lunch.  The second, the third variation of the first conditional, if, as soon as, when, etc., plus subject, plus can, plus the verb. And then we have subject, plus will, plus infinitive. The examples. If you can get me a ticket, I'll go to the concert with you. Or another example, if he can speak English well, he'll get the job. So let's look at three other variations now. Are you ready for the second part? Great. If, when, as soon as, plus subject, plus present simple. The second part, which is the result, subject, plus may or might, plus verb, when you want to talk about possible futures. And the examples here, you may open the window if you're hot. Or if you ask him, he might invite you to his party too. So might here in the result and may here in the result. Okay, just to talk about a possible future. So another variation would be if, when, as soon as, before, plus subject, plus present simple in the condition. And then the variation here would be subject, plus should, plus verb. When do we use this variation when you want to give advice? So for example, before you start a new job, you should learn more about it. Or if he likes watching movies, he should watch them in English. So advice. The sixth variation, or in this case a reminder for you, is that we don't only use if in the condition part of the sentence of the first conditional. We use also before, until, as soon as, etc. Let's take a look at my two last examples. Until I know what's really happening, I won't tell them.  Now, let's recap. In this lesson, we talked about the first conditional. We had six variations of the first conditional. We use the first conditional if you want to talk about results that could happen if the condition happens first. Let me remind you that we use the formula if, when, as soon as, before, until, plus subject, plus the present simple in the condition. And in the result, we use subject, plus may, might, imperative to, should, etc., plus maybe a verb. That's it for today. Thank you very much for watching. I really appreciate all your comments, all your examples, and your suggestions. If you have a new sentence for this type of first conditional, please type it under this video. Don't forget to share the video, please. It's really important. And having said that, have a nice weekend, and I see you next week with a new lesson. Take care. Bye-bye.


Good morning. My name is Brian Gallagher. I'm the CEO of United Way Worldwide. We'll be doing this session in English, not because our panelists can't speak French. Each one of them can. Sadly, your moderator cannot. So I apologize for that. We'll be doing this session in English. We will keep our comments brief and then have a discussion among the panelists. And then also, hopefully, take questions from you. And I will not do the formal introductions. Each speaker has their opportunity to speak. I'll say a bit about their background contextually, but you can read their bios. You know, the title of this session, the Status of Healthcare in Africa, Challenges and Opportunities, seems pretty apropos, given the fact that there are clearly significant challenges and significant opportunities. There's been real progress made in health care across the continent. In the last 15, 20 years, life expectancy is increased. Childhood health outcomes are better. Death from communicable diseases is down. But clearly, that progress has been uneven, and we still have many challenges across the continent. Africans endure 17% of all the disease in the world, and yet are 11% of the population. 50% of all expenditure for health care across Africa is out of pocket. Only 1% of health care expenditures worldwide is in sub-Saharan Africa. And in fact, I learned just getting ready for this session, there's a $1.7 trillion US dollar fraudulent drug issue across the continent of Africa, a couple of that with infrastructure, poverty, violence in some places, the shortage of trained professionals. Clearly, we have challenges as well as opportunities. So as we think about in asking the panelists their thoughts on opportunities and challenges in the future, whether it's inpatient care, outpatient, preventative care, diagnostic services, is maybe to think about the way that President Kagami last night described. He was asked the question, did you look at the Singapore experience when you designed the governance model for Rwanda? And his answer paraphrasing was, we looked at everything. He wanted to create a Rwandan system. And what I would suggest is that there is an opportunity given the evolution of health care across Africa to create an African system. Not a US system, not a French system, not an Asian system, but an African system. And that's what I've asked our panelists to think about. So to think about challenges, opportunities, and then the path forward. First, let me ask Nardos Beckelay-Thomas, who's the resident coordinator of the United Nations in South Africa, but has been stationed in many countries throughout Africa, was also interestingly stationed in the Secretary General's office to manage affairs there. So it has a broad experience from a UN perspective as well as in country. And Nardos, I wonder if you share your perspective on regional challenges, opportunities national and overall. Thank you very much. I think you now start by contextualizing everything with the latest development that happened at the General Assembly just three weeks ago. And there was a high level meeting conference on universal health care. And there were, I think, seven points which I have gathered from that meeting. The first one is really for universal health care to happen in any of this world. You need political leadership. Political leadership at all levels. And political leadership that makes sure that there is a coordination between governments, vertical and horizontal linkages. Because a health minister is not the political leader. It's all the ministers that have to deliver on that. The second point is we have to uphold the leave no one behind. This is something that the SDGs have been promoting, and there should be equity. We cannot subject the marginalized people, the poor people, to only mediocre health services. They have to be eligible to a full-fledged, good health service, integrated health service. The third one is quality. Quality is very critical because the MDGs, you writes, Brian, we have delivered on that in Africa. There are primary health care centers all over Africa. But the quality is wanting. And Africans need quality health services. And the government has to make sure that that is delivered. The fourth thing is regulate and legislate. You have to make sure that health services and medical professionals are really clearly regulated. And that is also not only just from the services point of view, also we just talk this morning from the management perspective also. Management of hospitals, management of stock of medicines and all this. And that would take us to the training aspect of it. So we need to have trained, skilled professionals to deliver health services. The fifth one, which is critical and very important, is we need to invest and invest better than what we did before. The 15% pledge that we gave in Africa is not all fulfilled except with very few countries. So we need to invest. And we need to move together. To deliver health services, we need to have our research institutions, our technology institutions, our academic institutions to all deliver on the promises that the government has given. I give the example of South Africa. In South Africa, people think that South Africa is a sophisticated country. Yes, it is a sophisticated country. But there are two countries in one country. The country that has high tech health care system, which caters for 10% to 15% of the population. And the country that has really mediocre, like least developed country where there are basic health services, free by the government, but which caters to the 80% of the population. And the 5% there and there, we can put it as the middle class being part of the 10% that get high health services. We have 153 medical schemes. Each organization is obliged to have a medical scheme. The government gives free for all primary care, too, as long as they go to a public health services. And therefore, the public sector is really stretched, underfunded, and really does not have all what it takes to cater for the poor. Understanding this, the government has taken two important measures. The first one is to introduce the National Health Insurance Scheme, because the private sector is monopolized. There are three companies that deliver good services, high tech services to the population. And the prices are, of course, so high that the poor cannot afford it. So the National Health Insurance Scheme, one, M-Saturing, the cost of health care at all levels, two, make sure that each and every citizen of South Africa gets the health care services integrated that it requires. Three, it makes sure that there is a management of information and data in the house of the people, so that they have the liberty, the freedom to choose wherever they want to do. Information about themselves, but information about the mapping of whole health service facilities in the country. So this is what they are trying to do. It's a very, very tough thing to do. The government spends $717 billion, has pledged actually this year, at the State of the Nations address, the president said that he is going to put in place $717 billion runs per year for health care. $717 billion runs translated into dollars is $71.7 billion. As you know, South Africa is a heavy HIV burden country, with the exception of, you know, USAID, the paid part program in the global fund, the government funds totally. So, you know, government is really very, very keen in that. But unfortunately, corruption takes 22 billion runs per year from the $717. And the recent investigation by the government reveals that, and there is an action now taken to curtail corruption at all levels. So we'll probably come back to this issue of corruption and transparency and governance. But using South Africa as an example of two countries, and one in the complexity of the issues, I think is a good one. We'll also hear from Pierre about Nigeria and using a very large complex country example. Let me next turn to Dr. Julia Tuakli, who's the medical director and founder of Family Child and Associates in Ghana, a public health expert, a women and children health expert and practitioner and an academic. And so a very nice overview, Nardo's of the issue. Juliette, from a practitioner's point of view, what are the challenges and opportunities? And I think specifically, you're going to talk a little bit about technology and the role of technology in care going forward. Ghana's, most of you must know Ghana, I'm sure. But Ghana is in a rather unique position insofar as it is one of the countries that is hailed as doing very well with its national health service, with its capacity to try to raise the level, the standard of care for most of its citizens, which is all true. I think Ghana didn't fall into the trap of providing free care at the national health service level, because I think, and I was certainly in agreement, getting anything for free in any population probably is not a good idea. And health is no exception, even if what you pay is minuscule. And so the government in its wisdom has charged a very, very, very modest amount to those citizens who are eligible for national health service and have rolled out a pretty impressive program. The problem with Ghana is that it is in the middle of the West African hub. And some of our larger neighbors, such as Nigeria, where I'm from, I'm not saying this to be negative, do use services, as do many of the other countries. Liberia is another case in point. Certainly in my practice, we see people from all of the West African countries, especially Nigeria and Liberia, where the services really are much poorer than they are in Ghana. And certainly, they do have a deficit at the public health level. But even within Ghana, even within the national health service, which has been designed to provide to the best of its ability, a broad coverage to a relatively large population, there are gaps, which I consider to be quite important. Yesterday, listening to Paul Kagame, I was reminded of this, because within the national health service, there's no special area for women to seek care. And traditionally, women will not seek care until their children, their family, have been taken care of. And it does show up when we look at the statistics of the services that are provided, number one. And if you look specifically at the health status of women who are enrolled and registered with the national health service, so I think there needs to be a little bit of tweaking so we can empower and advocate access, more access, if you will, for women specifically. We have done a good job with lowering child mortality and morbidity, actually. But we have beautiful, shiny new roads courtesy of China and other large countries. And the rate of road traffic accidents is beginning to negate some of the gains that we have made regarding some of our mortality and morbidity. It's an ironic situation. Many of us in the public health sector had been monitoring the rise of non-communicable diseases. Obesity is particularly important. Diabetes is another. Hypertension is almost epidemic. But certainly, when one looks at the specific numbers, one will see that road traffic accidents trump all. And it's definitely been increasing with the number of roads, that number of highways. Public health issues were not taken into account by and large when some of these roads were implemented, i.e. crossovers for pedestrians to use, side roads for school children to use, even roads for bicyclists to use. We have a large number of people who do cycle when they can't afford motor vehicles. And so they are fair game, unfortunately, along with the goats and the cows and other things that sort of find their way onto the highways. And I really think we need to, within the National Health Service, also look at road safety education for the children at the school level, primary school level, perhaps even further up, because it's becoming a major problem. Absolutely major. And a lot of the accidents certainly could be avoided. And this has got nothing to do with drunk driving. This is just a child who tries to cross the road, doesn't regulate the speed of the oncoming vehicle, and gets knocked over. And it's happening far too frequently, particularly amongst the younger population. So that is a bit worrying, I have to say. And then the other reason Ghana has a little bit of a strain on its system is because we're at the hub for the counterfeit drug system. And as Brian had mentioned, it is a huge business. 1.7 trillion US dollar business per annum. It is not small. There are several major countries involved, both in Africa and outside of the continent, who are pushing these medicines. There is some pushback coming on board, where we have some technological firms developing scratch cards, the system of the scratch card method, that a purchaser can scratch the silver foil on the medication and use their app on their phone to see whether it is a legitimate drug or not. And a company called Sproxel is now working in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Tanzania, and I think even in Senegal. And certainly, I think it's a fabulous program because it involves the government at a very high level as well as the drug manufacturers. But most importantly, one doesn't have to be literate to use it. I think that many of the programs that we do have often presume a level of literacy that is not always present. What I like about this particular program and why I pray that it will be successful is that everybody, I mean, 80% of our population have mobile phones, and 80% of them are used to refilling their services using the scratch card method. So I think it's a very, very, very important intervention that needs also to be promoted and supported. Nardo spoke about leadership. Leadership really is essential. At the current time, we have a president's wife who is very supportive of many of the health interventions that are coming on board. The president himself eloquently discusses them, but it's actually been his wife, I've noticed, who has been much more involved in trying to make sure these advances are sustained and implemented. I think also the last but not least point is the issue of geographic access, which is why I think technology is so important. We have some very remote areas in Ghana where you don't have as much telephony as you have elsewhere. And so you'll find that access is limited. And of course, this is often where outbreaks occur. People aren't aware of it until it becomes a community epidemic, and one is then scrambling to try to contain preventable outbreaks. But I do think, as I discussed earlier, that technology might provide us with a bridge to leapfrog over some of our infrastructural deficits. And certainly with the sproxel example I gave you regarding the counterfeit drugs, I think that's an excellent application of technology. I can speak more to this a bit later, but I'll stop there. It's a, you know, the roads and the accidents on roads just remind me that the two common threads are this transition that countries in Africa are between emerging economies and developed. And that not always plan for the Passover. The road's issue is a perfect one. So Robert Siegel, the question is, why would we invite the CEO of the American Hospital in Paris to a conversation on healthcare in Africa? And Robert's a business leader, ran the GE health business in France before taking on the CEO role and has a very interesting perspective on healthcare generally, but also healthcare in Africa, if you would please. Yes, thank you, Brian. First of all, I would like to thank the organizer and certainly Thierry de Montbriand for organizing this session. Who can imagine that we will aim at a better world without having better health? It's impossible. So healthcare is certainly a founding block of better healthcare. So providing healthcare, if you want to deliver healthcare, whether in France, in the United States, or in Africa, you need basically three things. Basic infrastructure, water, electricity. Then you need healthcare infrastructure, buildings, equipment. And finally, you need human infrastructure, nurses, technicians, and of course physicians. When you look at Africa today, 47 countries, the situation is of course very diverse. If you look at Magreb, for instance, there is infrastructure. There is basic infrastructure, and certainly there is healthcare infrastructure. If you look at data regarding the physicians, for instance, and you look at how many physicians you have by 10,000 population. In Magreb, in Nigeria, you have 18 doctors. Morocco, seven. If you look at South Africa, you are at nine. But now, if you look in between, the situation is not the same. You would be below five, and it can go as low as 0.5 physician per 10,000 people in Nigeria. So there is clearly a problem, a quantitative problem. These progress, however, are there. And yesterday we heard Prime Minister Koulibali, who mentioned that the middle class is going to be 800 million people in 10 years. And this middle class is looking for healthcare, and in general, again, who can imagine that in all these countries, solid growth and social justice will occur without solid healthcare. And so in this mood of making progress, I would like to point to two specific domain. The need for quality is number one, and the need for accountability is number two. Need for quality, let me go back to the problem of physicians. Even if you say that in a country, you have eight, 10 doctors per 10,000. By the way, for France, we are at 30 for 10,000. In the United States, it's 26. But so you need to have the good doctors. You need to have specialists. It's not only, there are certain countries in Western Africa where you have three gastroenterologists for the whole country. So you need to train all those specialists. The second point I would like to stress on regarding quality is hospital and healthcare managers. It's not an issue only for Africa. Believe me, it's an issue wherever you are in the world in France as in any other country. You need good hospital managers. And this point points to my second point which is accountability. There is no shortage or there are financing and financiers around the world. It can be public. It can be the WHO. It can be the Gates Foundation. So there are money. But all these people are asking the same question. And it can be, of course, private sector, of course. But they're all asking the same question. If I invest one euro or one dollar whenever, what is a return on investment? Who is accountable for this money? I am ready to put a lot of money, but I want to be sure that there is a return on investment or a value for money. Call it whatever you want. So I think that for these two challenges, quality and accountability, technology is an answer. Not the only answer, but it's a very important answer. And let me be a little bit more specific. Number one, technology, of course, is completely linked to modern medicine in any hospital, in any clinic. You need now modern imaging, MR, CT. You need an operating room with tools that can deliver on the needs. So this is one. Now I would like to point to information technology. Information technology is transforming our world, maybe at the cost of the carbon, as was said before, but it's transforming the world. And it can be used in several ways. One of them is simply organizing digital education. I spoke about the need to enforce and enhance the education of physicians. We are organizing in our hospital every year what we call the gastro-training, where we train gastroenterologists of Africa, insight, and at the same time, we have a digital link with several countries in Africa where people can watch, participate to this. And there are a myriad of initiatives for this digital education. Now another point with digital is continuum of care, and this is very important. Today, what I see and what we're discussing in my hospital, we get a lot of patients coming from Africa, but in many cases, sorry, it's too late, as simple as that. We cannot do a good service for these people. So having tele-radiology, tele-medical conferences is a tool that able to triage the good patients and to avoid to get patients for which you cannot do anything. And once you've treated the patient, you have to follow up on this patient because you can imagine that you need to follow with the local doctors and the local infrastructures, so this is digital information. But you can even think forward, leapfrog. Let me just say something concrete about artificial intelligence. We are using today in our hospital artificial intelligence with mammograms to detect women's which are at risk for breast cancer. It's used with genetics and it's used with mammography. So today in the Western world, artificial intelligence is a help for the radiologist. But you can imagine that tomorrow in Africa, you have a mobile unit with MAMO, no need for a radiologist, and the MAMO is sent to the cloud a artificial intelligence program and is able to detect as simple as that and to point to women which are at risk for developing a cancer. So this is becoming real now, it's not just a dream, it's becoming real. And finally, the last point about technology, I come back to accountability, it's data. If you are digital, you have more and more data, you're accumulating data, and we know today that in the real world, in the Western world, accountability now is simply data. It's the fact that you're not just speaking with explaining nice things, you show to control the ship data. So if we put and develop those digital infrastructure, the accountability and the capacity and the will of the payers to sustain the effort will increase. I will just finish with this point. In my previous life, industrial life, it was an American company, and the company understood at some point that it was not what was good in America was good for other continents. And there was a lot of efforts which were done in China, for China, in Asia, in India for India. We can exactly imagine the same for Africa, in Africa, for Africa. And yesterday, we had President Kagami, which was there, everybody knows the IT success of Rwanda. You can perfectly imagine that some solution, local solution, are invented in Africa, and because we are close to the market, to the needs, we are cost-effective, and they are good for Africa. But tomorrow, and this was what happened for in China, for China, and in India, for India, those products, which has a beginning where only good for those markets became good for the entire world. So maybe step one is maybe in Africa, for Africa, but step two is why not everywhere in the future? So I am optimistic for Africa. Thank you, Robert. Let me let Pierre jump in here and then we'll go to all four. Pierre-Mé, Pille.  You're the fourth. So that's either great position or horrible position. Your perspective on what you've heard so far. Merci beaucoup. Sorry, thank you very much. Brian, I wish to, first of all, recognize that the Africa continent, over the 20 years, the past 20 years, has made significant progress in improving the health of the people. Despite, of course, the disparities between the regions, disparities between the countries, and also within the countries. The Africa continent carries 25% of the global burden of disease. Home of almost 20% of the world's population and only 2% of the world's doctors. So many challenges. But there is hope somewhere. In some countries, like Cabo Verde in West Africa, Rwanda in Central Africa, Botswana in the southern part of Africa, and Ethiopia in East Africa. And I would like to highlight what happened in Ethiopia because it's a true success story in health sector strengthening. Because of the political leadership and commitment for change. Change for health, leadership for actions. And Ethiopia, over the past 20 years, has made impressive progress in improving the health of the Ethiopian people. Ethiopia, just in 2015, concluded health sector development programs from 1997 to 2015. Composed of four series of five years. And this amazing work because Ethiopia achieved almost all related millennium development goals in 2015. And this health sector development program was based on a very bold strategy. The health extension program putting for 5,000 people a health post managed by two nurses, all women. So in a country where you have 100 million people, it's about 18,000 health posts. That is amazing. And of course. All the way down to the local level. And they do promotion, health promotion, prevention. And they use the new technologies, the smart phone because of the national phone coverage network. It's used to monitor. Are they networked through digital technology, the 18,000? To monitor the pregnancy, to monitor the child immunization. So it's about promotion, it's about prevention, it's about care. You can do the HIV testing in the health post. You can monitor the TB. That is a package of key essential health services at low level. And at least two nurses in each post. Two nurses are two women. That is very important to see the place of the women to, you know, a change happening in Ethiopia. And within the community, you also have, it depends on the largest of the, what they call the village. So that is 25 to 45 women leaders within the community, so-called women development army. I was telling the prime minister of Ethiopia, oh, you have maybe the most powerful army in Africa. And he said, ah, no. I said yes, but it's not about the militaries. It's about the women development army embedded in the community, being the link between the two nurses and the community. So let me ask you a question about that and ask everybody to come in on this question. So you've all talked about infrastructure at some level, whether it's human infrastructure or technology or, you know, resources, natural resources. What's the infrastructure requirements that you've seen in going to grounds, you know, versus being centralized at the top of going to ground? And I wonder if all four of you would think about, does the infrastructure have to be thought about nationally only? I mean, should we be thinking about these approaches regionally and even regionally outside of Africa? So, Robert, do you think about an axis from Paris to African countries that are focused on patients that then have to have infrastructure all along? How do you think about infrastructure in this case and how, as you think about scaling innovation, how should we think about organizing infrastructure going forward? Why does it only have to be national or should it be beyond that? Of course, maybe Robert will say more. But I don't think that the infrastructure or health facilities must make a difference. Of course, we need, at all levels, at low level, at district level, at regional level, and at national level. But I don't think it's the people. The human resources are key to make a difference, to improve the health of the people. You can have a beautiful hospital, what we call in French Elefant Blanc, big with everything. But if you don't have the right person, the right doctor, the right nurse, the right midwife, the right training for you. The right place. The health of the people will not be improved. That is my understanding of what we should do in Africa, making sure that we have the people to do the job. Others? I would go along and say one of the things that we haven't mentioned, which I think is very important, is that 85% of most of our patients at any level have usually consulted a traditional healer before coming into the health system itself. So if we're going to devise a system, as you described here, which is excellent, you have people there by who actually understand this, at least potentially, and perhaps can incorporate their knowledge of that, as well as the traditional healers themselves at some level, where it's regulated, of course, and genuine, into the mainstream medical system, because I find that oftentimes we speak as medical people, as though those people, i.e. the traditional leaders, are messing up what we're trying to do. And in fact, that's not entirely true. There are some cases, there are some illnesses, there are some conditions where it's really important to work hand in hand with the traditional healers. And I think where you have a national program that takes into account the relevance of traditional healers in the family life, and then you have women who are part of the community who, of course, assume that this involvement has taken place, I think that makes for a more effective practice of medicine. That's fascinating. Nardo-sen and Robert. I think from my perspective, I think by keeping on saying the ecosystem, we need to have an ecosystem. What do we mean by ecosystem? If a country knows the disease burden, for example, it has to produce the skills that are necessary for that. It has to produce all the infrastructure that you require for that. And this infrastructure should not be a standard one. It should be a differentiated one. And we change this over time. So that's one thing. In South Africa, for example, we have supported the CSIR, which is a Council for Science Innovation and Research, and working with the Cape Town University, we have turned the biomedical engineering students to be designing the medical equipment that the country requires. So we have come out with an asthma equipment by one of the students, which is really something that you can squeeze. Easy squeeze, asthma thing. We have come out with information technologies like mom connect, HIV connect, and all this, where people subscribe and they share information. But we have the most important thing, is the envy flow, where a device, where people can go and be detected. Like you said, the mammogram and all these mobile portable things. So these are students. We have got the young generation whose DNA is technology. Our children come out and they're soft-skated. So we just have to empower them and make sure that the environment is compatible with the needs of the society. So linking them to is very critical. The other thing when you talked about subregional, when I was in Kenya and we developed this cross-border initiative, there is no need for countries where the borders are there to have one hospital in Kenya, another hospital just 100 meters in Ethiopia. It doesn't make sense. They call themselves scale. So what you do is you have the primary centers there and taking advantage of the reference hospital there. So we have to be very strategic in the way we invest. And we should think, this is a global world. It's borderless when it comes to problems. When it comes to solutions, we have to make it also borderless and enjoy the economic system. Flexible and dynamic infrastructure design, Robert. And then we're going to take a couple of questions from the audience and wrap it up. So regarding infrastructure, think global, act local. So this is what Paul Kagame told us yesterday. He benchmarked essentially with other good practices. So there is no one good solution. You have to think global and act local. Now regarding the actors, it's difficult to think that you will deliver good healthcare in a failed state. The state shall continue to play a key role. There is no doubt about that. But to me, the key answer is pragmatism. You can have the state, you can have academic, you can have private sector, you can have donors. It should be pragmatic, but this is my last thing, is the gain accountability. So deliver. Be sure that whatever the plan, you follow up on execution and that at the end of the day, you've got execution, local execution. This is really key. And from the beginning to build a plan where you go from the vision to the plan and then to follow up on execution. Because there are too many stories that we heard about this Elefant-Blanc, nice hospital, nobody's inside. And so this of course is discouraging for the actors. Yeah, it's a line of sight into the operation. And then as data becomes more accessible, how do you manage the data? Right here is Jean-Claude and the woman down here and then right here. This is three and then see where we are. Well, congratulations for a great discussion. A very short question for you, Brian. Why as the CEO of United Way, you care about health in Africa? Because Robert does. I'll answer that. Yes, to the woman, lady down here. And then the man in front and then we'll... Thank you. I want first to join the Mr. Siegel in commending the World Policy Conference for dedicating a special panel on health care in Africa and asking for attention for that. Because I consider that health care in Africa is the single most important challenge African states are facing. So there are a lot of problems. You spoke about it globally, about culture, training, and you know that. There's not one single head of state, African head of state, who believes it can be treated in Africa.   But I think of Central Africa, basically. And there's something I just don't understand. I understand lack of training, I understand lack of infrastructure, all the problems you listed. But I don't understand the lack of compassion.  They are being ripped off. I mean, we wanted to open a website on the model of MeToo. Tell about the abuse you are having there. How would you put that into a question? Yes, that's a question. How do you tackle that? It's not technology, it's not infrastructure. The lack of human compassion. That's it. Where do you put it into? Good. And then final question here and then we'll see where we are. Right here, please. It's on infrastructure and how to make some of the white elephants less so. And Juliet knows this that yes, decades ago, there was a policy in Ghana to build a hospital in each district. At that time, I don't know how many districts there and 110 districts, and hospitals were built. And in that particular case, it came along with the equipment. But I don't think the energy to run these hospitals were touched through, because at that time, if in many, and most of these districts are rural districts, of course there are some in the urban center, if renewable energy, just solar panels had been used to provide energy, most of the equipment would probably still be functioning by now. But they were put on the national grid, which Ghana is sort of reliable, but the power cuts still happen. And so you find that within a year or two, very sophisticated equipment put across these hospitals. So you're saying there needs to be an integration of the energy strategy with healthcare strategy. Especially as we were just talking about climate change and energy. That's very good. I'm sorry? Okay, one more, and then we have four minutes left, and we're going to give each one of you an opportunity to react to the questions you've heard. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As you're all in Europe, you see, I've done a lot of that in Europe, I've done the prescription. So I took the opportunity to take a tour of Paris, I did the radiography, I brought him the hydrhythmic, you see, it's clear he was happy. I was unhappy. Because films are imported, kept under the heat, and when you use them, it's all gone. So the question is, second point, it's the medicine and the traditional medicine. We have neglected and killed them, whereas in all the faculties, in the medicine, in the pharmacies, and in the laboratories, the medical materials, the most numerous and the most effective are the tropics. There are many in the tropics, and we are the most effective because we are sometimes fighting by pharmaceutical laboratories for traditional medicines that can be valued. I'm not going to say more, more the fake medicine. The fake medicine. No, the fake medicine is on the other side of the world. But no state can fight against it alone. So it's a big problem and the French president, Jacques Chirac, came here to help you. So you have to write it in the conclusion of our work. So I would take that, and I'm sorry, we have to close with those. I would take that last comment as there are lots of resources in Africa and the world. We're sub-optimizing those resources. We're not taking advantage of medical conditions and so forth. But also, the idea of integration of energy policy and healthcare policy and the different cabinet ministry level in government. And then finally this idea of human compassion that shouldn't it just be part of our DNA that healthcare and how we treat each other should be priority one. So any of that or however you'd like to take 35 seconds to make your final point and we'll come this way. I'd like to address the issue of compassion because it was one of the first problems, if you will, that I had to deal with in setting up a practice in Ghana. I had been at Harvard and taught there and set up practices in Boston and the very first thing that hit me was the seeming lack of compassion and yes, in many ways it was a lack of compassion. And I think that in the conditions under which many of the doctors work, I bring it back to the issue of leadership and poor management. The management of the resources within the medical facilities does not support those physicians who put themselves out to really do what they're supposed to do. And I think it's almost like systematic trauma that they are incurring. They're training. They abuse, if you will, starts there. They're expected to work much longer hours than they do in the west and I do mean much longer hours. Nobody can work for three, four days with barely a satisfactory meal and then see a patient and be compassionate. I am not trying to exonerate our healthcare workers. I can assure you I'm not because it is a major, major problem and even hiring old workers for the practice that I run. That's one of the first things I look for because I will not exonerate it. But I do have a better sense of having practiced for 15 years in Ghana seeing some of the conditions under which they're being taught. That's why I don't teach at the hospital there because I cannot teach in that environment. I simply cannot and offer quality medicine. It's impossible. But I bring it back from the actual physicians themselves who don't know any better at that time to the leadership. We don't have our leaders trained in medical management. The people who run the hospitals are usually physicians themselves that have been plucked because somebody liked the way they looked and put them in charge of the hospital. That's not adequate. It's not enough. It's not good enough. There really is an issue of leadership and I can be sure that if I were to go to a Rwandan hospital I haven't been there in a while but even when I went there decades ago you could see that people were selecting people based on qualification not because of some arbitrary interpersonal relationship that they might have with the person. And once you have somebody who understands what quality medicine is and how to get it out of a doctor trained they will not allow they will not permit some of the conditions under which those physicians have to work. We lose our doctors annually because they just give up and move out or into NGOs and other organizations but it's a dreadful situation. Thank you Juliet. So leadership and quality came out of that Robert briefly. In 1950s the life expectancy was around 45 years old. Now today we are at 60 so it's still the lowest in the world but it has tremendously progress and there are all reasons to think that it will continue to progress so it's of course science it's of course financing it's of course humanity but it's of course leadership and I think the question again in this conference the question of leadership is absolutely key because you have some force which have to be empowered and drive this effort. Excellent. Here. Again and again. The problem is not to respond to each of the challenges we will not settle all the problems. I think what we need in Africa leadership commitment for action to change the life of a people. I talk about Ethiopia. They are not rich. I talk about Rwanda. 20 years back they had a genocide. I talk about Kapoverdi. It's not a rich country. I talk about Botswana. They have Daimon but we have so many rich country in Africa. The health sector is failed. They are not able to provide the minimum package of essential health services to people. I think the problem in Africa we need leaders involvement to change the life, the situation of the people. Very good. I'll start with the compassion but I would expand it a little bit. In the entire world, it's not Africa values and standards have really gone down completely down and therefore the world has to think on how to really bring back societal values family values, professional values into the forefront. Truly. I think this should be a discussion, a universal global discussion and not really specific to Africa. Yes, the compassion and passion is associated with the environment and again and again what I said first comes when we plan in a silo we will never get anywhere. So we have to start adopting an integrated planning, an integrated budgeting and develop ecosystems and therefore when we talk about you know what my big brother Robert Osus just said when we talk about healthcare system we shouldn't look at it from just one aspect of it which is a treatment. We should look at it from the preventive side to the treatment the whole integrated system and looking at all environment. When you plan you have to really know the business burdens and how many medical doctors in what fields we should train them and then the institution should respond to that you know academic institution produce them. So you know we have to really look at research institutions like I said you know the biomedical engineering you know they do engineering they go out of course they run out of job because it's not relevant to the socio-economic development we do everything outside the socio-economic development needs of the country and that's where we run into problem. Just one thing I think also for Africa we need to really move out from thinking of and talking about just all the time what we don't have and really highlight on what we have and on how to scale it up there are many best practices everywhere. There are many best institutions everywhere each country cannot afford to have research institutions but it can piggyback on an institution that exists CSIR in South Africa is not an institution innovation centers African governments and leaders come there they don't even visit that research institution. So we have to really know on how to share our resources and on how to talk about you know highlights about prosperity what are the areas of excellence that we can share with others. Thank you so much you know this is one of those examples yeah please that we could take a great deal more time but that's what lunch is for that's what hallway conversation is for let me finish with this one thought United Way is the largest privately supported NGO in the world we generate about five billion dollars US per year and one of the things we've learned and you heard here is that no longer is innovation and scaling going to come from the top down or the center out it's going to come from the out in and the bottom up and whether it's individuals, patients countries we're growing very quickly in India, Mexico China now starting in Africa because we're coming bottom up. Scaling health care will as I think you heard be about leadership quality transparency but engagement of individuals patients driving their their own care in our institutions responding to that that's why we care about health care in Africa. Bon appetit have a great lunch.


Hey man, do you think it's okay if I date a non-Christian? First, it's important to realize that dating someone is a serious thing. Ultimately, intentions should be getting to know this person to see if they could potentially be your future spouse. Their worldview impacts the way they wanna raise kids, use their money, the career they have, and because they don't share your Christian faith, their perspectives are gonna be very different. Are you really prepared to marry someone that's not a Christian? Well, I mean, I probably won't marry them if they're not a Christian, but maybe during dating they'll come to Christ. Dude, I'm telling you, this is a recipe for disaster. You can share the gospel and witness to people that you're not in a relationship with. By entering a romantic relationship with this person, you're elevating the emotional intimacy you have with them, which is gonna make you more hesitant to bring forward gospel truth that might offend them and more heartbreaking when you have to abandon the relationship if they don't ultimately turn to Christ. The truth is that many people compromise even if that person doesn't turn to Christ because they form such an emotional bond with them. I don't want you to have to make that decision. I hope that helps.


Massimo Polidoro is our next speaker. Like I said, there's a switch in the program. So Massimo is one of these effortlessly stylish continental guys and I just hate him. He just always looks so cool. He's going to give a talk about his book that he's writing about James Randy. The talk is called Amazing. The book is going to be about James Randy and his life. So here is his limerick. I asked Massimo when I stressed, if Italian culture possessed any limericks or such, and he said, no, not much. We're just stuck with the food that's the best. Here he is, Massimo Polidoro. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. As we said, we're going to talk about James Randy's story and why we think that we need an amazing Randy story. Have you seen An Honest Liar? Isn't it a great movie? I mean, you have everything in it. You have drama, you have suspense, you have love, you have emotions, strong emotions. And it's a fantastic movie. Justin and Tyler, they did a stupendous job in researching and interviewing new people. They are doing festivals all over the United States and abroad. And in the fall, the movie will come out in theaters. And if you haven't seen it, please do go because it's worth it absolutely. So they have interviewed friends and foes from, I know, David Pena, who is Randy's long-time partner, to Arch Nemesis for a Geller. There are interviews just prepared for this special occasion and archival material, a lot, a lot of stuff, really, that got into it. But still, it's a 90-minute movie. And you can only really give a glimpse into the life of such an extraordinary person as Randy is. Right. So that's why we need a biography to tell James Randy's story. The good news is that the work is already well underway. The idea is originated with Penn, Penn Gillette, of the duo Penn and Teller, our friend. In 2005, he was able to convince Randy that a biography of his life was needed, and he started interviewing him. Then he involved talented Kim Schimber from New York who did an incredible amount of research for years.  By 2010, the research was overwhelming. So both Randy, Davey, Kim, and everybody who has invested time and money in this project asked me if I could be involved in actually writing the book. As if you were here last year, I told you how I was Randy's apprentice in 1989, 1990, and so on. We shared many adventures, many investigations and research and travels, but especially when we shared a strong friendship, which is much more than what it is between mentor and apprentice. I consider him like a second father, and we've always been very close. But apart from this and from my role in the skeptical movement, let's say, I was asked to be involved in the project because since 1990, when I got back to Italy, I've become a professional writer. I write for believing. And so far, I've published over 42 books. Thank you. Some have been translated in various languages, and I wrote two specifically in English for Prometheus books. So I have, I think, both the knowledge of the subject, which is Randy, and the techniques to tell the story and to make it into a reality. So in the past year, I went through, again, through all these materials, specifically that Kim and Penn generously shared. I went with Kim, we spent a long time in New York going through every paper, every single story. And then also Justin and Tyler, they shared their material for the movie. There was really an incredible amount of material. And myself, I've always been a fan as well of Randy. So since 1989, today, I've collected tons of materials on him. So this is the situation at the moment. The book will be made. I can tell you that. I will share, of course, the credit with Kim. And Penn Gillette will write an introduction. But we still haven't searched for a publisher. We plan to do this by the end of the year. We find a publisher by the end of the year. And if you are a publisher, or if you work for a publishing house, or you know somebody who does, this is a good moment to think about buying those rights. However, as I told you, I make my living from writing. So I can only devote so much time to this project until we find a way to sponsor my work. And I think that if I can be completely immersed in this incredible and fantastic and inspiring story for a whole year, I can have the book finished in one year. So we're thinking maybe in the fall to try a crowdfunding campaign in order to sponsor this work, or maybe another possibility could be to release parts of the book as they are ready through the Kindle Direct Publishing system. We'll see. There is still time to decide and to see what's best. But as you've seen, first of all, do you like the idea? And if you like to help make it a reality, and if I can ask the lights to be turned up for a minute, you've seen me maybe during these days at the meeting, going around, asking for short stories and interviews with some of you brief statements showing that there is a strong interest in the life of Randy and also that it deserves to be told. And I would like to collect more afterwards. If you are here and if you are staying, I'm here. You can find me outside. But now that I'm here in front of you, I would like to take advantage of this situation and ask you if you can help me in a big, don't be afraid. It's nothing. This is the phrase. I would like you all to convincingly scream, we want to read the amazing Randy story. I want to film you, of course. And I make a count of three. And on my three, one, two, three. Don't say band. Don't say that. It doesn't work. Say we want to read the amazing Randy story. OK, are you ready? One, wait. Wait. One, two, three. We want to read it. Yes. Yes, a good one overall. You know what, just to be sure, let's do it again. One, two, three. Go. This is fantastic. Thank you. Thank you very much. So if you want to help, another way could be that spread the word. Talk about this project to your friends, to through your blog, to your podcast, to your social networks, whatever you like. I'm going to set up soon a web page and a newsletter. And if you want to receive updates, you just send me an email to this address, massimo.org1.gmail.com. And I will put you on the newsletter. You will receive how the project is going. You will know. And you will receive also sample chapters, stories, and material that I find through the files. You can also, of course, connect with me through Twitter, Facebook, or my web page, whatever you like. So this is such a fascinating and exciting story. You saw the movie. There was the alpha project, the pop-off, the Carlos Hawkes. But there is so much more, so much more to tell the Water with Memory, the Ben Veniste Fair, the Ted Sirius, X-Ray Vision, the James Hydrick episode, which is so heartbreaking once you know the full story. The Columbus Poltergeist, another sad story. The MacArthur Award, the million dollar challenge. And then there is the old escapes, the magic career, which is a book in itself. And then there are also the dark stories, the threats, the black male campaign, the libel suits, every kind of way to try to stop him, but they didn't work. And it's going to be great to tell this exciting story. And I would like now to join me on stage, Kim Scheiber, which surprisingly came here from New York, a big round of applause to Kim. Thank you. She called the I-Jones when we were going to the stage. I think I should call the I-Jones when we were going to the stage. Yes, this is a good word. Yes, as you can see, Kim with a very New York attitude. As a New York, yeah, you tell me. Does this work? Yes. I don't think Massimo teased the book properly. And to be fair, this was not my title. It's pens, and maybe I'm about to get in a bunch of trouble for this. But I'm going to tell you the opening story of the book along with the title, which is, I, James Randi, will die today. And the story is this, that when Randi was doing the mentalism bit through the Canadian provinces in the year 2, was it, Randi? In the year 2, he used to, every morning when he got up, take a business card size piece of paper and an ink, put the date on it, and then write, well, OK, this audience, I can actually tell the truth. What he actually wrote was, I, Randil Zwingi will die today. But for the sake of the book, we're going with I, James Randi will die today. And then he'd sign it. And he'd put it in his wallet, where if he were to get lucky, and a safe fell on his head while he was walking down the street, which, given one of the safe escapes that he almost didn't make it out of would be a fitting death for Randi, it would be the very first thing the police would find. And the headline the next day in the paper would be, mentalist predicts own death. The need to know about Randi is contained in that story, because it's the perfect promotional effort that he can't capitalize on even a tiny little bit. And it's a mystery that he gets to leave the world with forever. And it turns out, Geller never gets to be able to do anything better than that. So that's the title of the book, or at least it has been for the last, I don't know, five, six years that we were doing the work and the research. And that's just the first story. And it's not even close to the best of the bunch. There are another. We could just do a book of stories like that that would be the surely you're joking Mr. Randi, equivalent of the Feynman book. But there's way, way more than that that Massimo talked about. So I think he should try and go film you all saying that thing again, but twice was probably enough. And I look forward to reading it. And I hope you all do too. Thank you. So this is not a long talk. I said what I have to say. We hope you will help us to do it. And with the help of everyone loving and respecting Randi, this is going to be a great book. And I hope that you all will be a part of it. Thank you all.