Health Conference Adjourns

The second International Conference on Health and Human Rights adjourns today, ending three days of discussion about human rights abuses and epidemic disease.

The gathering, which is being held at the School of Public Health, will end at roughly noon with a speech by Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights Jonathan Mann '69.

"We are eager to explore how ideas about the inextricable connection between health and human rights have been, and can become, translated into action in communities, countries and at the international level," Mann, who has chaired the conference, said in a press release.

The Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, which sponsored the conference, also endowed Mann's professorship and a new research building this week.

Francois-Xavior Bagnoud, the son of Countess Albina du Boisrouvray, was a Swiss pilot who died in a rescue mission in Mali, West Africa.

Bagnoud, who died in 1986 at the age of 24, planned to attend Harvard Business School. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan with a degree in aerospace engineering.

Bagnoud Foundation

Three years after Bagnoud's death, his mother sold all her inheritable assets at Sotheby's in New York and established a foundation in her son's memory with the goal of continuing his philanthropy.

"The purpose of the Foundation is to address the societal determinants of disease," said Howard F. Reitz, Mann's college roommate and the assistant to the United States director of the Foundation. "Albina has taken this great loss and re-channeled it in a very productive way."

According to Elizabeth A. Falk, the conference coordinator, the conference has brought together 500 participants from around the world to exchange ideas in an open forum.

"My purpose is to let the world know that there are human rights violations which affect the health of Africans," said Dr. Edmund N. Delle, a conference participant and president of the African commission of health and human rights promoters in Ghana.

Geoffrey W. Woolcock, an Australian graduate student attending the conference, said, "People struggle to speak a common language on human rights. We're showing that AIDS is inextricably linked to poverty."

Roberta P. Roy, who recently returned from her research in Zambia, said she was shocked by the differences in AIDS treatment available in the United States and in Africa.

She told the story of one African patient who could not take her medicine because she had no food with which to swallow it.

An alumni cocktail reception attended by President Neil L. Rudenstine was held last night to celebrate the work of the Organization.

Boisrouvray was unavailable for comment in her suite at the Ritz Carlton.