For Immediate Release
(Mexico City) Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), in consultation with numerous African NGOs, government officials, and individual health professionals, is releasing a guide today that shows how even very poor countries can build human rights into their health workforce planning and raise the standard of health among their citizens. The document is called "The Right to Health and Health Workforce Planning: A Guide for Government Officials, NGOs, Health Workers and Development Partners."
The guide already has its fans:
I find this document impressive, accessible, and groundbreaking. When one reads the document one can't but be amazed by the intense and intensive, broad and detailed consultations that have gone into this unique publication. It should be a pocket book to every health professional, a bible to every Minister of Health, a guiding star for every health and human rights expert and novice.
–Maxwell V. Madzikanga, Senior HIV/AIDS Researcher to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health
This document, both a practical manual and a manifesto, explains why a rights-based approach to health workforce planning is needed, and how countries can design a plan that assures everyone, including marginalized groups, the right to health.
Said co-author Eric A. Friedman, JD, PHR's Senior Global Health Policy Advisor, "Everyone deserves the right to health, but not everyone is allowed entry into the process of plotting out a country's health care plan. Yet countries that include input from marginalized groups are better able to reach those groups with health services. We want to show why a country should use human rights in its health planning, and then how to go about doing it."
Friedman was the first advocate to publicly discuss in depth the issue of Africa's health workforce shortage in the Physicians for Human Rights report, "An Action Plan to Prevent Brain Drain," released at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Since then, Physicians for Human Rights has initiated a successful campaign on the issue of Africa's health worker shortage and health system crisis. Among its successes, PHR was instrumental in the US plan to earmark funding for 140,000 health workers in Africa through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was reauthorized last week.
The guide outlines the groups that must be incorporated in the planning process from the start, and why. These include people living with HIV/AIDS, people with other disabilities, front line health workers, women, ordinary health systems users, home health caregivers, and traditional medicine practitioners.
In addition, the guide pays special attention to ways that planners can extend care to rural and other underserved areas. For example, it discusses the COBES Program (Community Based Education and Service) program, a successful initiative run by Uganda's Makerere University, which teaches students to provide health care in rural areas.
The guide also discusses specific benchmarks that countries can use to gauge how they are doing, and the role of accountability and follow up in country workforce plans.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Date: Monday, 4 August 2008
Time: 11h00 – 11h45
Venue: Room 2 (Mayas), Media Centre, Hall A, Level 1,
Centro Banamex, Mexico City
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.