CCOUC & CGH Health-EDRM Seminar Series 2025 cum Overseas Field Training Experience Sharing on Building Disaster Resilience in Vanuatu

Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC), Centre for Global Health (CGH) and their NGO partner GX Foundation organised a Global Health Internship Programme and field trip in the disaster-prone and climate change-threatened island state of Vanuatu in Southwest Pacific Ocean from 9th to 22nd June 2025. The purpose of this trip is to provide global health internship and field-based experiential learning opportunities relating to global health and humanitarian assistance in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) region to students of CUHK, as well as to empower local communities to cope with issues relating to public health and disaster preparedness. Nine CCOUC field trainees, both undergraduate and postgraduate students inside and outside the Faculty of Medicine from the multi-disciplinary field of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Law, Medicine, Nursing and Public Health, joined this 2-week field trip as field trainees.

To commemorate the 80^th Anniversary of the United Nations on the United Nations Day on 24 October 2025, student field trainees shared their disaster public health practice and related health promotion experience in the CCOUC & CGH Health-EDRM Seminar Series 2025 cum Overseas Field Training Experience Sharing on Building Disaster Resilience in Vanuatu, a hybrid seminar attended by more than 50 participants both face-to-face and online. In addition to disaster preparedness and vector-borne disease education, they strengthened community disaster resilience by distributing more than 4,000 disaster preparedness bags across eight villages on the Efate Island where the capital Port Vila was located. By promoting healthcare and education to enhance disaster resilience in Vanuatu as a developing country, this student field training experience echoed the key message marking the United Nations 80^th Anniversary “[b]y promoting peace, human rights and social progress, including access to healthcare and education, the United Nations has improved the lives of people around the world, creating better living standards for all.”