Looking to the challenges of the future, participants reflected on the changing needs and demands of a global health workforce confronted with globalisation, climate change and an evolving perception of what healthcare entails. Integrating new technologies and the means through which to obtain and use funding and resources were just some of the challenges addressed by participants. All, however, focused on the need for a new approach, a new way of thinking, and a new way of acting to ensure that healthcare needs are met.

This session focused on the importance of education and training in providing health care for all. The speakers reflected on their experiences of providing training in different contexts, pointing out the importance of integrating rather than marginalizing a focus on the needs of communities, and the enthusiasm that such an approach can stir in students, the 'professionals of the future'.

This session consisted of three key presentations that presented a range of challenges facing Human Resources in health care in different African countries, including low staff morale, recruitment and retention problems, illustrating the issues with specific case studies.

Like much in the world, task shifting has its successes and failures. In health care it encompasses doctors to non-physician clinicians (NPCs), NPCs to registered nurses, registered nurses to community health workers (CHWs) and CHWs to expert patients. In order to tackle the question whether task shifting is the solution for health care worker shortages, lessons must be learned from the successes and failures uncovered in studies conducted on task shifting.

Thirty years since the Alma Ata declaration, and all four speakers agree that "We need to start looking for new solutions" if basic health systems can rise to the new global heath challenges. This session highlights how innovations are taking place as different actors are responding to different pressures. The role of the informal health sector in Bangladesh and the rapid changes in the health systems in South Africa in response to lack of human resources for the scale up of ARV (Anti Retro Viral) as specific perspectives are presented. The experience from health promotion efforts in South Asia shows the relation between socio political changes, strengthening governance systems and health.

On behalf of the Geneva University Hospitals, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, and the Forum Organizing Committee, we are delighted to welcome you to the Geneva Forum: Towards Global Access to Health. This second edition of the Geneva Health Forum comes as the result of the success of the first Forum, which took place end of August 2006.