PHM's Right to Health and Health Care Campaign: Progress report, Jan 09

Country updates

We have significantly advanced in the campaign's expansion since our last update in May.

We now have active, funded campaigns in Guatemala, Uruguay, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo and Cameroun. These countries have already sent in their campaign reports (except DRC doing it shortly). Moreover, India, Ecuador, Zimbabwe and South Africa are involved in the campaign without receiving our funding. We are in advanced negotiations to launch the campaign in Senegal and Djibouti. New PHM circles have been formed in the last three months in Mali, Kenya, Morocco and Uganda and they will be submitting campaign proposals shortly. We have further contacts manifesting an interest in the campaign in Brazil, Argentina and the Philippines We have failed to get the campaign going in Asia and the Middle East; more efforts will be concentrated there now.

The countries that have almost completed the assessment are now eligible for a small additional funding to hold a national workshop in which to present the results to the government, UN agencies, international and national NGOs and the media.

Any country not mentioned here is welcome to inquire with us how they can get a PHM circle going so as to launch the campaign.

Funding

The Campaign has benefited from the generous support of SC/UK, Oxfam/Novib, Brot fuer die Welt/Diakonie and Misereor. We are now pursuing other funding avenues for which it is yet too early to report on.

2009-2010 plan for the campaign

We are giving the final touches to this plan which should be available in the next 30 days. If interested, you can ask for a copy of the same to be sent to you.

Coordinating team

Claudio Schuftan is now taking the main coordinating role helped by Laura Turiano and Abhay Shukla. Sylvie Niombo in Bazzaville is our regional coordinator for francophone Africa. Kamayani Bali Mahabal is helping us in South Asia. Our 2009-10 plan looks at hiring a person to help Claudio on the growing workload of the campaign; we have been negotiating this with the Global Secretariat since last July. Some of our IPHU (the PHM University) graduates who have an interest can contact us.

Communications

We have been in personal contact with all the countries mentioned above. We have used pha-exchange or campaign updates and the PHM website www.phmovement.org has a page for the campaign with the RTH assessment guide already in four languages. We are aiming at having each country with an active campaign to have a page in the campaign site. Tometissi Pacome of the Benin PHM circle has offered to help with this.

Claudio is available to skype with anybody on campaign related issues at either clauviet or aviva108.

Training

We are proposing that national PHM circle members already involved in the campaign get preference in the selection of candidates for future IPHU sessions.

Publications and meeting presentations on the campaign from the past year

This past year, articles about or mentioning the Campaign have appeared in several publications among other including:

• Health and Human Rights: An International Journal, Vol. 10, No 1
• Accountability and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health, by Dr. Helen Potts
• Global Health Watch 2,
• The Campaign Assessment Guide was cited in The Lancet of 13 Dec. 2008, "Health systems and the right to health: an assessment of 194 countries," by Gunilla Backman, Paul Hunt, et al.
• And in 2009 a chapter called "The Right to Health: A People's Health Movement Perspective and Case Study" is appearing in the Swiss Human Rights Book: Realizing the Right to Health

Presentations on the Campaign were made at many meetings/conventions around the world the year just ended; among them:

• American Public Health Association, October, San Diego, USA.
• Doctors for Global Health Assembly, July, Iowa City, USA.
• The right to health: from rhetoric to reality, organized by The Lancet in London, December.
• AWID Forum 2008, November, Cape Town, South Africa. You can hear the presentations (in French) by Tidianie Nalbert, Aimee Kady, Caroline Mafogang, Blanche Zissi and Sylvie Niombo Ngoueme.
• International Strategy Meeting on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ESCR-Net, December, Nairobi, Kenya.

Please let us know if we have (inadvertently) left something off this list or you have seen the Campaign mentioned in the press.