First Day

My first day at the World Health Organization was absolutely surreal. There I was at 8:45am, standing outside the entrance of the main building staring at the giant logo that decorated the front windows in six different languages. People of all nationalities walked past me, marching from the bus stop into the glass fortress that is the WHO, dressed in their suits and adorned with their WHO badges. I took a moment to soak it all in: Was this real? Was I really here?

Myself and Amy outside the WHO and UNAIDS buildings.

Before I describe the first day's impressions and highlights, or WHOlights as I'll henceforth call them, I must provide a brief background. This summer, I am interning in the Green Light Committee (GLC) Secretariat, which is housed within WHO's Stop TB Department. The mission of the Stop TB Department (STB) is to provide leadership in the strategic and technical aspects of tuberculosis control worldwide, in order to reverse the epidemic and eventually eliminate TB. Currently, a third of the world's population has TB, and one in ten of these individuals will develop the full-blown disease. For many, TB can be treated with two first-line antiobiotics. But for those who suffer from the multi-drug resistant form of the disease (MDR-TB), a variety of second-line drugs must be used for up to two years. The STB seeks to control and prevent MDR-TB by increasing access to quality-assured second-line anti-TB drugs, and by preventing the development of resistance to anti-TB drugs.

This is where the GLC comes in. If STB outlines the strategy, GLC implements it. In a nutshell, the GLC approves projects in countries all over the world and implements a fine-tuned program to manage MDR-TB in those countries. This includes ensuring rational drug use and directly observed short-course therapy (DOTS), providing technical assistance, increasing access to high-quality and low-cost second-line drugs, and then stepping back to advise the WHO itself on MDR-TB policy-related matters according to on-the-ground scientific evidence.

This is where we interns come in. Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee, the Chair of the Green Light Committee and the doctor who interviewed me for this position back in the U.S., escorted Amy and me to our first noteworthy experience as interns: the Monday morning GLC staff meeting. I got to meet firsthand all the leaders of the GLC Secretariat and several other members of the WHO Stop TB Department. Not only did I get to meet them, but I will be working with them! Within an hour, we were addressing each other by our first names, and I was listening in on literally cutting-edge policy discussion with regards to everything from whether WHO should push one antibiotic over another, and how the WHO can get countries to provide information about their drug stockpiles and TB patient enrollment, to how one country had to wait 117 days (four times too long) for its GLC projects to get assigned their patients in order to begin programmatic treatment, and--get this--the decision of what the GLC logo should be!

Later on, I got to sit in on a conference call between all the members of the Drug Management sub-committee of the WHO's Stop TB Department, who were located everywhere from Rome to the U.S. Tomorrow, there's another conference call with who else but the GLC project managers for the entire country of Myanmar and Bangladesh! Meanwhile, I also got my very own WHO badge, lanyard, email address, and account, which grants me access to literally all the confidential WHO databases, country profiles, contacts, etc. at my fingertips. Let's not forget the gourmet lunch served in the cafeteria. Not bad for my first day on the job!

All in a day's work!

As for what I will be working on specifically, there seem at this point to be a few different projects, which my Supervisor Dr. Wieslaw Jakubowiak (the GLC team leader) has assured me are not only incredibly important but also immediately relevant to the policy decisions and actions that must happen this summer. There is a high likelihood that the projects Amy and I will be working on will directly inform GLC policy recommendations and future procedures, which is encouraging and exciting.

My workspace? Yeaaah...they're going to have to move me to Storage B (sorry, couldn't hold back the Office Space reference). In actuality, though, we are kind of isolated, exiled with a few other interns to a fourth floor hallway with a few computer kiosks. With people walking through every now and then, and with literally no wall decorations or cubicles (or really anything but our kiosks), it's definitely what you might euphemistically call an "open office." But I'm optimistic, and I'm sure I'll come to enjoy it. I already declared a contest to see which intern could think of the best name for our fourth floor loft (runway? cell? hallway?), though shortly realizing soon after that it was officially called the "Transient User Space." Sounds liked something out of a science fiction movie. Anyway, aside from the humorousness of the workspace, it is located in none other than the UNAIDS building, right across the lawn from the main WHO building, which is pretty sweet.

Our intern office, the so-called "Transient User Space."

As for the people, so far everyone seems awesome. Salmaan is the man, and the other GLC staff have been incredibly helpful and welcoming. I feel really comfortable around all of them, despite the bureaucracy and my undergraduate intern status, and it's neat to be able to laugh and talk candidly when we're not discussing projects and policies.

More stories and details to come soon, but for now I leave you with a few more photos.

"Sorry, Mike, but our office has a better view."

Geneva skyline and Jet d'Eau (Jet of Water) at night.