The World Has Been My Oyster
“The context of international uncertainty, which also has repercussions for health issues, has a significant impact on my work at the WHO, so much so that it has led me to reconsider my professional path, pushing me to take the first baby steps to launch something of my own in the field of maternal and child health.”
Contacted in the days in which Donald Trump took the US out of WHO and suspended funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Marzia Calvi — a Technical Officer at the World Health Organization — describes the effects of current political events on her role as follows: “For some years my task has been to identify policies and strategies to support the health ministries of world governments that have a program to fight tuberculosis, still the leading infectious disease in terms of number of deaths. Today my role has changed a bit and my goal is to integrate these programs within universal health systems, acting on the determining factors of health, those linked to hygiene, nutrition, environment and socioeconomic conditions, which favor the onset or spread of the disease. It is a multisector job, which, in fact, enters much more into relation with government policies.”
The globe has always been the horizon of reference for Marzia Calvi, since her debut at Bocconi. “I chose an undergraduate program in English, the Bachelor in International Economics, Management and Finance (BIEMF), to embark on an international career,” she explains. After experiences at the Toronto Chamber of Commerce and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to study its microcredit model, her academic career continued with the choice of a Master of Science in Economics of Public Management and International Institutions. The professional springboard towards her career in healthcare came with a position in the San Donato hospital group as junior manager, followed by a UNDP fellowship at the United Nations in Ethiopia, and finally a contract with the WHO working in the Geneva HQ. “It took me a while,” the alumna smiles, “but I managed to have a job that combined everything I wanted: travel, economics, global health, international institutions. Last year I graduated with a Master in Public Health and so I made peace with the idea I had as a girl of becoming a doctor. The subject of health has always interested me, but now I approach it from different, more lateral angles, looking at prevention factors that depend on social, economic or cultural conditions. Tuberculosis itself, for example, is a disease typically affecting men, connected to more masculine risk factors, such as smoking and alcohol, but it has strong gender implications because women are less assisted, less treated, more socially isolated than male patients. And yet, welfare programs — from microcredit to prevention —everywhere provide better results if they have targeted women or been managed by them.”
International careers often involve sacrifices in terms of personal relationships, and for a few years this was also the case for Marzia. “I always made clear to everyone that my ambition was to travel and work abroad,” explains the WHO official. “My husband joined me in Geneva, leaving his job just before the lockdown in 2020, having to find work in the Swiss private sector. Today the roles are almost reversed, he is the one with a more stable situation, while I am more exposed to changes dictated by current world events. In a way, this shows that stability is a combination of balances that can change over time. I am also close to my second maternity leave, so we will have to be good at finding a new kind of balance.” Now there is a common objective: to return to live and work in Italy. “I would like to put my skills and experience at the service of my country. From abroad, the strengths and weaknesses of our health service can be seen with even greater clarity. It remains a valued and unique model, but it must be updated and adapted to the new determinants of health and new global dynamics.”
