Physicians for Human Rights held a press conference on Tuesday in Mexico City to release a new guide: “The Right to Health and Health Workforce Planning: A Guide for Government Officials, NGOs, Health Workers and Development Partners.”
The whole idea of the guide is to show how even very poor countries can build human rights into their health workforce planning—and not leave behind marginalized groups, like women, front-line health workers, or people who live in rural areas.
The guide is both a manifesto—declaring that countries have an obligation to step up and provide health care for their most vulnerable residents—and a step-by-step handbook: Who do you invite into the process? How do you find them? How do you make sure your plan is really working?
PHR staffers Maggie Cooper and Eric Friedman wrote the guide with input from numerous African NGOs, government officials, and individual health professionals.
We had some auspicious help in launching it at the press conference. Our CEO, Frank Donague, noted that the guide was a follow up to PHR’s “An Action Plan to Prevent Brain Drain,” released at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand—a report that explored in depth—for the first time—the idea of addressing Africa’s health worker shortage as a separate issue.
Eric Goosby, MD; head of Pangea Global AIDS Foundation, talked about the vital need for basic information for incorporating human rights into health system planning. Pat Daoust, RN MSN, head of PHR’s Health Action AIDS campaign, gave an overview of the health workforce crisis that many countries are now facing. And Dr. Carolyne Onyango, founder of the Action Group for Health, Human Rights, and HIV/AIDS (AGHA) the first Ugandan group of health worker/AIDS advocates, spoke about how the idea of human rights, once introduced among Ugandan health professionals, is catching on like wild fire.
This 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
Voice of America television and radio is producing both radio and television pieces on the guide which will air later this week, so watch this space for details!
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Photos:
- Eric Goosby, MD, Pangea Global AIDS Foundation
- Eric Friedman, PHR; Dr. Carolyne Onyango, AGHA; Frank Donaghue, PHR; Pat Daoust, RN MSN, PHR; Eric Goosby, MD, Pangea Global AIDS Foundation
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