Session details: Session 1: Opening Session and First Keynote

The Council of the Baghdad Pact held its annual meeting in Karachi from June 3 through 6, 1957. Representatives were present from the five member countries—Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and the United Kingdom—and the United States was represented by an observer delegation. The Council had been scheduled to meet months earlier, but Iraq originally refused to meet with the United Kingdom. At the opening session, presided over by Mr. Suhrawardy, Prime Minister of Pakistan, the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri es Said, was reported to have spoken forcefully about the dangers implicit in the problems of Israel, Algeria, Kashmir and Cyprus. Mr. Lloyd, Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom, was reported to have followed Mr. Nuri es Said's remarks with a speech in which he announced his government's offer of a contribution of £500,000 a year in cash and in kind for building up the minimum military infra-structure in member countries. The speeches of other delegates were reported to be noteworthy for their frank recognition of past weaknesses in the Baghdad Pact organization and the need to give it new effectiveness. In the course of the first session the United States formally accepted an invitation to join the Pact's Military Committee; and a United States military delegation headed by General Nathan F. Twining started participating in a separate concurrent meeting of the Military Committee. The United States thus became a member of the Pact's three main committees, but had still not become a formal member of the Pact.

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Opening Session

Journal of the American Dietetic Association ◽

10.1016/s0002-8223(21)09817-5 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 63 ◽

pp. 10-14

Keyword(s):

Opening Session

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Contemporary Plagues and Social Progress

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.66.3.458 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 66 (3) ◽

pp. 458-461

Author(s):

Thomas H. Weller

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

Infectious Diseases ◽

Malignant Disease ◽

Diarrheal Disease ◽

Political Process ◽

Social Progress ◽

The Public ◽

National Congress ◽

Health Field ◽

Opening Session

For this address at the opening session of the First Mexican National Congress of Infectious Diseases in Children (ler, Congreso National de Infectologia Pediatrica), I have chosen as my title "Contemporary Plagues and Social Progress." While in medicine the term plague usually refers to diseases caused by Pasteurella pestis, the word has broader meanings and usages. It describes that which smites or troubles, can refer to an afflictive evil or anything troublesome or vexatious, or can be applied to any malignant disease, especially those that are contagious. It can be used as an expression of annoyance, as a mild oath, or with the implication of harassment. Thus, today we are concerned with the plague of plagues, the afflictive evils of the cumulative insults of infectious disease. Additionally, we might be tempted to cast a plague on the system of medical education and on the political process that neither conveys the continuing importance of infectious diseases nor funds the mechanisms for their containment. Or, should the shoe be on the other foot? Should not society cast a plague on us? As experts in the field of infectious disease, have we not failed to publicize that, on a global basis, the combination of diarrheal disease and malnutrition is the leading cause of death in infants and children? Has not our successful use of antibiotics induced unjustified public complacency regarding the problems of infectious disease? Why have our low-keyed reports of resistant typhoid bacilli, or pneumococci or of gonococci failed to dispel the prevalent mystique that science has controlled infectious agents, leaving cancer and heart disease in the public eye as the major unconquered problems in the health field?

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