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KPLU's Tom Paulson attending 'weird and wonderful' UN Week

People attend a 'Health Workers Count' event sponsored by Save the Children in New York's Times Square to raise awareness of the importance of midwives and local healthcare providers in developing countries ahead of the Unite Nations General Assembly.
Associated Press
People attend a 'Health Workers Count' event sponsored by Save the Children in New York's Times Square to raise awareness of the importance of midwives and local healthcare providers in developing countries ahead of the Unite Nations General Assembly.

As heads of state, officials and other bigwigs descend on New York City for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, key city streets are closed, the traffic replaced by police officers, patrol cars and vans, and New Yorkers are irritated.

It’s UN Week and most of the buzz is about the Palestinian push for UN recognition as an independent state. President Obama is already in town, scheduled to speak at the UN on Wednesday.

But I’m not here for all that. I just came to see the UN deal with a proposal to re-set the global health agenda — something that, arguably, could do a lot more to increase global stability, our national security and worldwide economic growth than all this other blather. Arguably.

Read more on Humanosphere.

The host of the Humanosphere community is Tom Paulson, who spent 22 years reporting on science and medicine at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Tom was one of the first daily news reporters to cover the topic of “global health” (a much-debated label which he discusses the merits of on the Humanosphere website).