Our guest to the delegates’ corner is Dr Mohammad Mehdi Gouya, Director, Center for Disease Control, Islamic Republic of Iran and a member in the Iranian delegation to the Regional Committee.

My expectation from this session of the RC is

Paying more attention to HIV as the fastest growing epidemic among 6 regions of WHO

Putting the challenges of MDR-TB/XDRTB/IB/HIV and intensified case finding programmes for TB for the next RC session (we didn’t pay attention to challenge of TB in this meeting)

MDR/XDR-TB/ TB/HIV

Dengue fever

Challenging issues of NCD regional programme

Mental health and drug use challenges

HIV infection and drug use challenges and access to key population

NCD discussions

Pooled vaccine

Prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT)

Because all of these issues are important and challenging priorities on our agenda