Africa

Read and download the Right to Health and Health Care Campaign (RTHHC) reports:

• Uruguay (in English)
• Cameroon (in French)
• Togo (in French)
• Benin (in French)

The National Health Insurance (NHI) - in essence a pooling of public and private resources for healthcare - will potentially increase significantly funds for health, and therefore, it is assumed, improve access for all South Africans to a wider range of services.

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Greetings from Nairobi.

The main objectives of PHM are:

• To promote the Health for All goal through an equitable, participatory and inter-sectoral movement and as a Rights Issue.
• To encourage government and other health agencies to ensure universal access to quality health care, education and social services according to people's needs and not people's ability to pay.
• To promote the participation of people and people's organisations in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of all health and social policies and programmes.

The Right to Health is about people’s access to healthy food, clean water, decent sanitation, adequate housing/shelter, steady employment and proper health information. Because health is determined by so many factors outside the health services, we need to promote people’s understanding of the Social

Determinants of Health as part of the campaign. The campaign must be led by civil society, including many sectors required for the health of communities.

From the 1st June 2009 the PHM Global Secretariat will be hosted by PHM-South Africa in Cape Town, South Africa.  Ms Bridget Lloyd has been appointed Global Co-ordinator.

In a new report released today, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) finds that a causal chain runs from Mugabe’s economic policies to Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, food insecurity and malnutrition and the current outbreaks of infectious disease. The report is based on a health assessment by PHR public health and human rights experts who travelled to Zimbabwe in December 2008.

12 November 2008, Center of the Book, Cape Town, South Africa

The launch was chaired by Marian Jacobs; Molefi Sefularo, the Deputy Minister of Health gave an opening speech; Fran Baum spoke on the report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health; David Sanders gave an overview of GHW2 and Ncwame Cedile spoke about PHM South Africa.

22 October 2008, Harare, Zimbabwe

IPHU participants from the 'Africa Group’ have agreed that in order to strengthen the movement, they would each need to first start by working locally, strengthening the PHM activities in their respective countries, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. They commited to support each other in developing and strengthening the PHM in each of their countries as they work towards an Africa-wide People’s Health Movement.

As part of the ongoing Global Right to Health and Health Care Campaign, the campaign was launched in Benin on 1st March 2008 in Abomey Calavi.