Ramon Abracosa

Ramon's expertise areas are civil and environmental engineering, urban infrastructure development, climate change management, and land and water resource management. He has over three decades of work experience.

He currently serves as Program Manager for the ADB-managed Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA trust fund) and as urban development and climate resilience expert for the multi-donor Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund, also managed by ADB.

Lachlan Guthrie

Lachlan is a Research Fellow and Project Manager (Integrated Water Management and WASH) at the International WaterCentre in Griffith University, Australia. He has extensive experience in integrated water strategic planning and water security. He has recently completed several high-level water assessments, most notably Key Dimension 1 of the Asian Development Bank’s Asian Water Development Outlook 2020 which addresses access to water, sanitation, health impacts, and affordability within countries across Asia and the Pacific.

Kate Medlicott

Kate is the Sanitation and Waste Team Leader within the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) team at WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. In this role, Kate is responsible for translating evidence to policy and practice through WHO guidelines and health sector collaborations where sanitation is a critical component of risk and disease control (such as antimicrobial resistance and neglected tropical diseases).

Kate is also coordinating WHO’s activities on environmental surveillance for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

ADB WASH and health webinar: WaterAid’s health systems strengthening approach for WASH in healthcare facilities

This presentation discussed a health systems-strengthening approach to improve WASH in health care facilities; hand and environmental hygiene behavior change in health care facilities; and how WASH links to health security and antimicrobial resistance. It also highlighted the progression of WASH interventions at the global level, particularly noting the milestone of the 2019 approval of the WASH in health care facilities resolution at the World Health Assembly.

Vanita Suneja

Vanita has over 25 years of experience in the development sector. She has been working on a wide range of issues including water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), small holder agriculture, forest governance, rural livelihoods, women’s land rights, renewable energy, climate change, extractives and mining. She is currently leading the policy and advocacy work with WaterAid at the South Asia regional level. Prior to WaterAid, Vanita worked with Oxfam India and the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development in New Delhi.