Yuriko Terada, 5th year medical student, took the chance to participate in 7-week internship in World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland from February through April, 2016. Let’s hear what experience and impression she had. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I experienced a lot of amazing things through the internship at World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. I stayed there for 7 weeks and in the weekends I would travel beyond Switzerland to other countries like France and Italy.

I remember my first day at WHO where I was relieved by the warm welcome by other interns and staffs, and then was taught global nutrition targets and the role of WHO in nutrition field from my supervisor in the Nutrition Policy and Scientific Advice Unit. This unit’s work includes monitoring and analyzing nutrition policy, providing guidance on inter-sectoral nutrition policies and development of policy implementation tools. My work was mostly reading over 100 nutrition policies from around the globe and extracting key data from them. I learned nutrition problems that each country was facing and what they were tackling. I also helped on preparing for the 2nd Nutrition Global Monitoring Framework.

Other than the desk works, there were lunch seminars every week where you could learn about different health topics from different departments like young marriage in Africa or the problems of hearing loss in children. Also every day was World SOMETHING’S Day (World Health Day, World Women’s day etc.) and it was great to think about cutting edge problems lying in the global health field.

I also met many talented interns from around the world. Some of them were doctors but most of them were from different backgrounds like health management, pharmacy, and epidemiology. It was my first experience to talk to someone from Israel or Iran, who were so nice and smart. I enjoyed sharing opinions with other interns about health issues and international problems related to countries’ history. We would hang out after work or in weekends and share many stories of ourselves.

I was so obsessed working in WHO, and thought that to work there means to take part in a small step towards a peaceful and sustainable world. I learned more than I had expected. WHO was an organization which worked closely with countries’ ministry level. I am now looking forward to work in the local level but I am determined to pursue my career in the global health field and help people who lacks in medical access with deep insight.