Meet Nasra Ismail ’22, an undergraduate in Global Development with a commitment to develop critical health solutions for underserved communities globally. As an intern with the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office of the World Health Organization, Nasra worked directly with local partners to develop real-world strategies to eradicate the cholera outbreak in Yemen. From her leadership in Cornell’s chapter of Universities Fighting World Hunger to her research on childhood obesity, Nasra champions equitable access to basic human rights on campus and beyond.
What are the grand challenges you want to solve in the world?
I am interested in the health aspect of development, primarily with water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues, as well as health and wellbeing concerns. Clean water access is something too many people take for granted. For tens of millions of people around the world, the reality is that clean water is impossible to access. Water is essential to life yet unclean water kills, and kills viciously. In my future career, I seek to develop solutions that expand equitable access to health and wellbeing services. I hope to have the privilege of working with projects in the future to address grand challenges within clean water access and WASH issues.
Tell us about your engaged learning experience in Global Development.
I shadowed the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO-EMRO), which serves as the communication medium between country offices and UN headquarters. The organization provides technical support and training to country offices, monitoring and measuring impact, and informing donors of progress being made.
My engaged learning experience focused on the cholera outbreak. Cholera is a bacterial infection often transmitted in contaminated water. It’s a terrible disease that can kill quickly and impacts people of all ages, especially children. Over 93% of all cholera cases globally were concentrated in Yemen from 2017 to 2019. Since 2016, there have been 2.5 million suspected cases and over 4,000 deaths. The goal of the WHO is to keep case fatality rates below 1%. In past years, the World Health Organization has successfully reduced the case fatality rate in Yemen to 0.16% which is far below their 1% goal — the strategic planning and research that goes behind their interventions is effective!
In my internship, I had the privilege of attending the WHO-EMRO deep-dive conference where the country, regional, and headquarter offices established their goals and objectives for addressing the outbreak in Yemen. The goals were to research, identify, and prioritize the short-term, medium-term, and long-term interventions to prepare and respond to the cholera outbreak in Yemen. The challenges are great and made even worse given the additional variables like the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced resources and donor support. At the conference, I was able to engage directly on critical topics like epidemiological situation, leadership and coordination structures, preparedness and response planning, resource planning and mobilization, supply chain and logistics, case management, key health interventions, third party monitoring, use of oral cholera vaccines (OCVs), WASH, and risk management.
