The IFHHRO Africa Regional Training on Monitoring the Right to Health took place in Kampala, Uganda, in December last year. It was organised by AGHA and IFHHRO's Africa Regional Focal Point. The objectives of the training were to bring health professionals and their organisations together to share experiences on monitoring the right to health, to develop an understanding of health related human rights, to make health professionals aware that they have responsibilities regarding the realisation of the right to health, particularly through monitoring, to show the practical meaning and significance of monitoring the right to health in the day-to-day work of health professionals and their organisations, and to develop practical action plans for the future.
Values, Policies and Rights
This meeting, organized under the auspices of the Network of Africa Parliamentary Committees on Health (NEAPACOH), and organised by PPD Aro, focused on implementation of regional and international commitments including the International Congress on Population and Development, Program of Action, the Maputo Plan of Action, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the FP2020 commitments, among others. The meeting provided a platform for building capacity and raising awareness of members of parliament on sustainable development. At the meeting parliamentarians from across the continent assessed progress made, challenges and lessons learned on achieving the country commitments made at its previous 2014 NEAPACOH meeting, built a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities for sexual and reproductive health in the post-2015 development agenda, shared experiences and innovative practices on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to enhance accountability, political leadership and stewardship for implementation over the coming 12 months. By the end of the meeting, a resolution (The Kampala Call for Action) was adopted by participants, on their commitments to address these issues.
An adolescent woman requests a contraceptive method from a health provider in a country where access for under-aged users is restricted; a couple denounces an involuntary sterilization to a local nongovernmental organization; a woman requests a legal abortion in a context where termination of pregnancy is highly stigmatized and access to safe services is denied her. These are just examples of terribly unfortunate but common features in developing countries, where women, particularly poor women, lack the necessary power to successfully fight for their needs and rights. A meaningful and appropriate response to these complex situations requires a comprehensive approach. As acknowledged by the authors of ‘Reproductive health and human rights: integrating medicine, ethics and law’, no single discipline or perspective will resolve the many dilemmas involved in protecting reproductive and sexual health.
The concept of reproductive health promises to play a crucial role in improving health care provision and legal protection for women around the world. Here now is an authoritative and much-needed introduction to and defence of the concept that, though internationally endorsed, is still contested by conservative agencies. The authors of this book are leading authorities on reproductive medicine, women's health, human rights, medical law, and bioethics: they integrate their disciplines to provide an accessible but comprehensive picture.
This book is a collection of 16 critical essays by leading scholars and practitioners in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Each author analyses the legacy of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) from a different perspective or focuses on a particular topic. They examine strengths, weaknesses and whether and how the ICPD mandate can still be used to improve sexual and reproductive health. Given the complexities and challenges of implementing and continuing to take forward the ICPD agenda after more than fifteen years, the undertaking in this volume is laudable. The essays all contain some dimension that should be of interest to a variety of readers. Some provide historical background which might otherwise be forgotten. Several other authors point out that the absence of reproductive health in the initial targets for the Millennium Development Goals was a serious setback. While the target of ‘universal access to reproductive health’ has since been added, one of the essays, ‘Mobilising resources for reproductive health’, points out that a strong evidence base is needed to demonstrate that poor reproductive health outcomes do, in fact, undermine the chances of the poor to escape poverty.
The complications of unsafe, illegal abortions are a significant cause of maternal mortality in Botswana. The stigma attached to abortion leads some women to seek clandestine procedures, or alternatively, to carry the fetus to term and abandon the infant at birth. The author reports in this paper on research into perceptions of abortion in urban Botswana in order to understand the social and cultural obstacles to women’s reproductive autonomy, focusing particularly on attitudes to terminating a pregnancy. She carried out 21 interviews with female and male urban adult Batswana. The article presents a review of the abortion issue in Botswana based on the research. She notes that restrictive laws must eventually be abolished to allow women access to safe, timely abortions. The findings however, suggest that socio-cultural factors, not punitive laws, present the greatest barriers to women seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. These factors must be addressed so that effective local solutions to unsafe abortion can be generated.
The complications of unsafe, illegal abortions are a significant cause of maternal mortality in Botswana. The stigma attached to abortion leads some women to seek clandestine procedures, or alternatively, to carry the fetus to term and abandon the infant at birth. The author conducted research into perceptions of abortion in urban Botswana in order to understand the social and cultural obstacles to women’s reproductive autonomy, focusing particularly on attitudes to terminating a pregnancy. She carried out 21 interviews with female and male urban adult Batswana. The findings however, suggest that socio-cultural factors, not punitive laws, present the greatest barriers to women seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. It is argued that these factors must be addressed so that effective local solutions to unsafe abortion can be generated.
Healthcare research is haunted by a history of unethical studies in which profound harm was caused to vulnerable individuals. Official systems for gaining ethical approval for research, designed to prevent a repetition of these shameful examples, can prove bureaucratic and inflexible in practice. The core ethical principles of respect for autonomy, prevention of harm, promotion of benefit, and justice (which form the basis of professional codes of research conduct) must be applied flexibly to take account of contextual, methodological, personal and practical considerations. Ensuring that the design and conduct of all research is ethically sound is the responsibility of all involved—including researchers, research institutions, ethics review committees and regulatory bodies.
The 42nd Regional Health Ministers' Conference with the theme “Scaling up Best Practices in health care in East, Central and Southern Africa” took place at the Sun n Sand Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya from the 6th to the 11th of February, 2006. The conference was ttended by Health Ministers from the ECSA Region, representatives of regional and international organizations as well as developmental agencies. Resolutions were passed at the conference in twelve major areas of health in the region.
The 62nd ECSA Health Ministers’ Conference (HMC) was held at InterContinental Resort Balaclava Fort, Republic of Mauritius under the theme: Transitioning from Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals with the following sub-themes; Enhancing Universal Health Coverage Through Innovations in Health Financing for Risk Protection; Surveillance and Control of Emerging Conditions: (NCDs and Trauma); Regional Collaboration in the Surveillance and Control of Communicable Diseases; Innovations in Health Professional Training Using the ECSA College of Health Sciences Model. The Conference passed Resolutions on: Transitioning From MDGs to SDGs in the ECSA Region; Enhancing UHC through innovation in Health Financing for Risk Protection; Surveillance and Control of Non- Communicable Diseases and Trauma; Regional Collaboration in the Surveillance and Control of Communicable Diseases; Innovations in Health Professional Training using the ECSA College of Health Sciences Model; Global Health Diplomacy and Strengthening Ministries of Health Leadership and Governance Capacity for Health in the ECSA-HC Region; and Strengthening the Use of Evidence in Health Policy.