Opening of the World Health Academy in Lyon in 2023

Training in global health issues

First announced in June 2019, the Academy aims to "train public officials, business leaders and the driving forces of global civil society in world health issues". France will invest more than €120m in the project.
Partly financed by local authorities, the World Health Academy will open in Lyon in 2023 at the Gerland biotechnology research cluster, which is home to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and a hub for pharmaceutical companies.

The new WHO facility will help meet the pressing need to train health workers.

A range of courses starting this summer

In the summer of 2021, a first online course catalog will be released.

To host the first training courses, the WHO Academy simulation center, located at the Departmental and Metropolitan Fire and Rescue Service (SDMIS) in Lyon is nearing completion.

Collaborations have already been organized, such as in March 2021 when two photographers from the iCAP department of Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University took part in a photoshoot of simulated victims in a reconstruction of a 30-bed hospital emergency department.

The series of photographs will be integrated into the database of more than a thousand patients used in the WHO Academy's training courses. One of its first hybrid courses will focus on the organization of emergency service professionals and their actions in the first 30 minutes after the occurrence of an event involving dozens of victims.
 
© Eric Le Roux - Communications Office, University of Lyon 1

 
During the session, moulage was used on 61 models (medical students and IFAS Esquirol students as well as Red Cross volunteers) representing 198 people injured in different scenarios.

Other partnerships could be set up with the University, allowing WHO to benefit from its expertise in education, immersive learning and so on.