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Former head of UN Ebola Response Gives Keynote at HHL Conference in South Africa

The 7th annual Conference on Health and Humanitarian Logistics will be for the first time in Africa next November 18-20th. Given the critical lessons learned on the importance of improving health systems and coordination in the humanitarian sector from the Ebola response efforts in West Africa, we are excited to welcome Colonel Girish Sinha as the keynote speaker to share about the importance of strengthening capacity across various systems to improve emergency response and long-term health care in Africa and around the world. Sinha was the former Director of Missions for the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), which provided the operational framework to deliver rapid, effective and coherent action to respond to the Ebola outbreak, care for the infected, maintain stability and control the spread to other countries previously unaffected by the outbreak.

This was the first health emergency response mission ever launched by the United Nations, and it was mandated with the role of coordination of the United Nations System response to combat the Ebola virus disease in Guinea, Liberia, Mali, and Sierra Leone. The nature of the Mission required innovative operations including the integration of UN air assets with WFP UNHAS as well as the establishment of a geospatial information telecommunications technology to serve as the backbone infrastructure of the entire operation across four countries.
Col.Sinha was born in Bihair, India. He is a graduate of Defense Services Staff College, Wellington (India) and Molinovsky Academy (Moscow). After 22 years of service with the Indian Armed Forces, he left the service at the rank of Colonel and joined the United Nations. He has served at the UN in a number of roles. In each mission, his objective has been to deliver uninterrupted operational support to the peacekeepers in the areas of rations, fuel, water and sanitation, medical, transport, communications, and accommodation.

To find out more about panel speakers, workshops, or poster presentation opportunities or to suggest topics to address, please visit the conference website or email msmithgall@isye.gatech.edu. Information will be updated as it is available leading up to the conference. To REGISTER NOW for the 2015 Conference, please click the attached link or visit the host institution website directly (Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa). 

Col Girish Sinha
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