Meeting about Dementia at Todai, and Heading to Nairobi the Same Night

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During the afternoon of the 23rd of August, I attended a meeting announcing that Japan would be joining the ‘A4’, a clinical research programme spearheaded by the US,aimed at operationalising the use of diagnostic imaging for the early detection of Alzheimer’s and then monitoring for a further four years. This announcement was made by Dr. Iwatsubo of  Tokyo University’s Graduate School Faculty of Medicine, at the Ito Memorial Hall in Todai.

I made the keynote speech about my participation in the World Dementia Council. The Ito Memorial Hall where I gave my talk was packed to its capacity of 200 people, and my talk seemed to rivet the audience’s attention.

I presented about the founding and subsequent developments of the WDC, also touching upon public-private partnership initiatives such as the EU’s EPAD and the GAP Foundation from the US. The main message that I emphasised a lot was that such platforms with a global outlook are something that we desperately need in Japan. I also tried to describe what the implications of such a platform would be.

It will be a big challenge to replicate in Japan the successes of the multi-stakeholder platforms I mentioned in the talk, but at the same time, I feel enthusiastic about meeting this challenge head-on.

A few days later, I received an email from the consul of the British embassy thanking me for the succinct explanation of the UK’s initiative in setting up of the WDC during the 2013 G8 Summit.