Our guest to the delegates’ corner is Dr Aliaa Alkaabi, Family Medicine Consultant, United Arab Emirates, and a member of the United Arab Emirates delegation to the Regional Committee.

I expected the RC agenda to include the following.

Discussion on strategies for areas such as noncommunicable diseases and support for intercountry agreements.

How to establish country information-sharing mechanisms.

• From my point of view the two most important issues on the agenda were:

noncommunicable diseases

strengthening health care systems.

What I liked most during the event were the technical papers on control of noncommunicable diseases and strengthening health systems because they were evidence-based and included action plans which could be implemented.