COHAB 2005, the First International Conference on Health and Biodiversity

COHAB 2005, the First International Conference on Health and Biodiversity, will be held in Galway, Ireland from 23rd - 25th August 2005. This important global event will provide an international forum for scientists, professionals, policy makers and stakeholders to address the issues linking environmental health, human health, biological diversity and international development.

Themes to be discussed at the conference include:

• biodiversity and ecotoxicology,
• the use of wild species for pollution assessment and as sentinels of environmental health,
• functional biodiversity and ecosystem services,
• pathogen pollution and the ecology of infectious disease,
• biodiversity, genetic resources and drug discovery,
• ethnomedicine and traditional knowledge,
• the value of wild species as models in medical research.


A special session of COHAB 2005 will discuss policy options for addressing the health and development problems posed by biodiversity loss, with relevance to public health and development planning policies worldwide.

COHAB 2005 is being organised in association with the Centre for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, the Secretariat to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Conservation Union, the EcoHealth Journal and Network and other international organisations.

The conference brochure can be downloaded at http://www.cohab2005.com/summary_files/Brochure.pdf.
Full details of the conference can be found at http://www.cohab2005.com; Enquiries should be directed to Conor Kretsch, COHAB Director, email: info@cohab2005.com.