[MDGs] Urban living a challenge to reaching MDGs

Focus on MDG 7- ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Special Guest

Gregory Pappas MD PhD has worked in 40 countries including Pakistan where he served as Chairman of Community Health Science at the  Aga Khan University.  He wrote and edited (with Omar Khan) “Megacities and Global Health for APHA Press.  Dr. Pappas was a major author of the PEPFAR Five Year Strategic Plan: a report to Congress and worked in six countries in Africa and the Caribbean rolling out antiretroviral therapy, building infrastructure for care delivery.  Dr Pappas  has also work extensively in the US and is the author of numerous articles, including his work in the New England Journal of Medicine “The increasing disparity in mortality between socioeconomic groups in the United States “and his book with Cornell University Press, The Magic City: unemployment in a working class community.

“ Urban living: a challenge to reaching MDGs”

By 2007 over half the people on planet were living in cities and the trend continues.  Cities in less developed country have serious health challenges and inequalities that  if not addressed will make reaching MDGs even more difficult
. In addition large here it comes  urban centers in  global cities (megacities over 10 million people) are the source for political unrest and breed disease that threaten the entire global.  Getting development right in these places matters to us all.