“The World Health Assembly’s rotating Executive Board meets twice a year, and on 29 January concluded its 132nd meeting with what the WHO director general termed an ‘unprecedented’ amount of agenda items and documents,” Intellectual Property Watch reports. “WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, who alternately explained, sang, and cried during the week, concluded the meeting by saying it had been an unprecedented session, with an unprecedented number of items (nearly 60), an unprecedented amount of documents to read (over 1,000 pages), and a huge turnout for a Board meeting, with 885 people on the first day,” the news service adds.

“One of the reasons the WHO has such a full agenda is that it has standing administrative issues (including updated rules on election of the director general and program and budget), longstanding policy initiatives, as well as new initiatives, such as the global vaccine action plan and a plan for non-communicable diseases (NCDs, like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases),” according to IP Watch, which details the outcomes of several sessions. The news service provides a link to all of the documents from the meeting (New, 1/30).