IAEA Thus Far

Hi all,

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve had a chance to update on part two of my residency here in Vienna. The PACT office has been completely swamped with work, since, as the Director General has made his main focus Cancer Care and Control in the developing world, everyone wants to work with the IAEA’s umbrella programme for cancer.

This has left me with a lot to get done in my 4 month internship here. My first major accomplishment has been a PACT brochure that I authored and helped design on the IAEA/PACT in Africa. The 4 page document is on its way to the printers today and should be ready by the end of this week. That may not sound like a lot of work, but it took an entire month to get all the editing, designing and clearances for the document finished.

Outside of working on this publication I have started a second booklet on PACT in general. This document is going to be a complete overview of the Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy and will be used as the main PACT brochure for the next year or so. This is going to be a lot of work, however, and it might not be finished in the month and a half I have left. But, all of the text has been written, so one of the harder parts is finished.

Other things I have completed have been web articles both for the PACT website and the IAEA website. One of the Articles on the PACT/BHGI partnership was written by me, although I’m not credited, and is currently one of the major articles on the IAEA website and is available on the BHGI site as well. I have two more articles that will be up on the IAEA website this week, and another one slated to be up next week after I attend the AGaRT meeting on the increae of access to Radiotherapy Technologies in the developing world.

It has been great working with the PACT programme as, since they are so busy, I have been treated as a normal staff member with important tasks rather than just an intern. I was at a meeting for the Standing Advisory Group on Nuclear Applications and the director of my Department was introducing me as the communications officer, which makes you feel somewhat important!

Our main focus lately has been providing support for the Africa Day Celebration at the Vienna International Centre here this week. I have a meeting with the Ambassador of Zimbabwe tomorrow to get all the final preparations in place, and I just wrote a speech for the Director General Yukia Amano to be given at the commemoration.

That’s all for now.