EQUINET, PHM, CWGH, TAC, SATUCC, Southern African Social Forum, SEATINI, PATAM and HAI convened a regional meeting of health civil society on February 17-19 2005 in Zambia, with local hosts CHESSORE.
The meeting resolved to build a united health civil society campaign for a national peoples health system. The meeting identified that to build this the region needs to address pressing issues of:
- Investing in adequate, well trained, appropriate, equitably distributed and motivated health workers;
- Ensuring sustained increased fair financing of the universal right to health, through rising investment in the public health sector;
- Building a critical mass of conscious and organised people, with rights to meaningfully participate in their health systems,
- Resisting privatisation and promoting public interests and national authority in trade agreements in the health sector.
Latest Equinet Updates
Participants at the Regional Meeting on Health Committees co-hosted by the Learning Network for Health and Human Rights, the Centre for Health, Human Right and Development (CEHURD) and the Network on Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa (EQUINET), 27-28 September 2014, Cape Town developed the statement from the meeting committing themselves to strengthen regional learning networks between countries of the south for advancing health committees as vehicles for community participation and calling on governments to recognise and incorporate health committees into their health systems in ways that maintain their roles as autonomous agents for democratic governance; WHO to provide guidance on inclusion of Health Committees in Health Systems Governance; and for discussions on updating the WHO Building Blocks approach to recognise the role of collective community action through Health Committees when inserting notions of public and patient engagement.
The Health Economics Unit (University of Cape Town, South Africa) has a new Facebook page. The Unit conducts research in health economics, health policy & health systems, offers Master's and PhD training and facilitates regional and international academic and policy networking. The Unit is particularly interested in using their research to influence health policy and practice. You can follow the Unit on Facebook to see their regular updates, post on their wall and communicate with them about health care issues.
Labour Voices of the Airwaves is broadcast in five languages on 39 community radio stations in South Africa. This 7-minute long show broadcast earlier this year looks at the South African government's progress towards the World Health Assembly resolution on universal coverage, defined as adequate access for all at an affordable price. The spokesperson from the Ministerial Advisory Committee on the National Health Insurance (NHI), Fidel Radebe explained that the NHI is intended to be a financing system to provide universal coverage to all South Africans. Prof Di McIntyre from EQUINET -Health Economics Unit at the University of Cape Town, argued that universal coverage can only be achieved through fair financing mechanisms, and these would either be tax funding or a national health insurance scheme that integrates all funds into one pool for the benefit of all. Nehawu spokesperson Sizwe Mpamla explained why the union is in favour of NHI, saying that an universal health system would mean increased funding for the public health sector, which would lead to improved facilities and this would positively impact on health workers working conditions. Asanda Fonqa of Denosa was similarly positive about the move towards NHI. Prof David Sanders of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape said that NHI would only contribute to achieving universal coverage if it chose a viable model for delivery; he said that if the bulk of NHI funds were used to cover private health services, universal coverage would not be achieved. Activists like Sipho Magodella of the Anti-Privatisation Forum remained skeptical that the government was really committed to delivering an equitable, universal health system and therefore skeptical of the planned NHI. Only when the full NHI proposal is made public will South Africans be able to assess to what extent it is likely to bring about universal coverage. This file is too large to load to the website so those interested are asked to contact admin@equinetafrica.org
From 2016, co-ordinated by Training and Research Support Centre (TARSC), EQUINET has implemented research and policy engagement on extractive industries / mining and health in east and southern Africa (ESA), working with regional partners in East Central and Southern Africa Health Community, the Southern African Trade Union Co-ordinating Council, SADC Council of NGOs, the Alternative Mining Indaba ad others. The work and knowledge shared contributed to the development of a Mining and Health Literacy Module, to provide information and support discussion on advancing public health and implementing the right to health in the mining sector in the ESA region. In March 2019, against this background, TARSC in EQUINET organised a regional meeting on health literacy in the mining sector in Harare, Zimbabwe from 28-29 March 2019 for organisations that had been actively involved in planning and leading work on health in mining to date. The meeting involved delegates from Botswana Federation of Trade Unions, Benchmarks Foundation, Swaziland Migrant Mineworkers Association, Southern African Trade Union co-ordinating conference, Botswana Labour Migrants Association, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, National Mineworkers Union of Zimbabwe, Southern and East African Trade Information and negotiations Institute and TARSC. The meeting discussed health literacy outreach for workers, communities and ex mineworkers in the mining sector; shared information on the scope of and groups covered in current mining and health capacity building programmes and reviewed the methods for and use of the EQUINET health literacy module on Mining and health. Delegates planned collectively subsequent follow up training activities on mining and health, and discussed co-operation on upcoming regional processes on health in mining. The group agreed to continue to work together as a ‘Mining and Health’ Working group to take follow up work forward, with each contributing inputs related to their work. A health literacy training of trainers workshop on mining and health will be held in follow and those interested should please contact EQUINET using the feedback form at the website shown.
Over the last five years the Regional Network For Equity In Health In East and Southern Africa (EQUINET) has generated a range of analyses of specific policy experiences in Southern and Eastern Africa and has developed the understanding and skills necessary to conduct this sort of work. Other work conducted by EQUINET, such as around governance and participation, is also relevant to understanding how to strengthen health system decision-making in ways that support health equity goals. It is time, now, to take stock of the range of health policy analysis work in Africa – and to draw out lessons from past experience, as well as identify new challenges for the years ahead. This workshop took place as part of the pre-conference activities of the EQUINET conference September 2009 on Reclaiming the Resources for Health. It was convened by Lucy Gilson, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town and Ermin Erasmus, Centre for Health Policy, The University of the Witwatersrand. The workshop aimed to: reflect on health policy analysis and its role in health system development; share experience in the use of health policy analysis to support policy development and implementation; share experience in teaching health policy analysis (in short course, post-graduate programmes etc); and develop shared ideas of how to strengthen this field of work in Africa. It provided an opportunity to reflect on health policy analysis and its role in health system development. Participants shared experience in the use of health policy analysis to support policy development and implementation and on teaching health policy analysis. In the workshop participants shared ideas of how to strengthen this field of work in Africa. The workshop was held as a pre-conference workshop to the EQUINET Regional Conference and involved delegates drawn from the conference and thus the wider regional work on equity in health.
The meeting was focused on ensuring universal treatment access through sustainable public health systems. The goal of the meeting was to develop resolutions on the principles for strengthening health systems for treatment access, and to develop potential areas for work for EQUINET related to EQUINET’s programme of work areas.
EQUINET is part of a consortium that was appointed in September 2005 to co-ordinate the Health Systems Knowledge Network of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. The Centre for Health Policy in South Africa has been appointed as the hub of the Knowledge Network on Health systems. The Commission is a global strategic mechanism to improve equity in health through action on the social determinants of health at global, regional and country level. This outline briefly describes the function and key areas of work of the Health Systems Knowledge Network, exploring the important role that health systems can play in reducing social differentials in health.
Two recent global initiatives – the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health (Every Woman Every Child, EWEC) and the Global Plan for Elimination of new HIV Infections among Children by 2015 and Keeping Mothers Alive (Global Plan) – recognise the importance of strong health workforces and call for additional commitments on human resources to be made. This consultation cohosted by EQUINET seeks to gather stakeholders from within and beyond the region to action-oriented movements to strengthen health workforces and improve access to good practice in addressing barriers to improving the numbers, distribution and quality of the health workers needed for maternal and child health. The meeting will share experiences and best practices in how the health worker needs of the EWEC and the Global Plan fits with the overall human resource planning, the promising practices underway and unresolved issues that need to be addressed. Please email the address below for further information.
A regional meeting was held to bring together the cross section of stakeholders from WHO/AFRO, SADC, ECSA-HC, EQUINET, government officials and researchers from the region to develop a harmonized approach for follow up research on health worker migration. The workshop report outlines the discussions and protocol developed to: highlight the key policy issues arising nationally, regionally and globally on the impacts of health worker migration on health systems; and identify key evidence gaps in negotiation of policy and agreements relating to protecting negative health systems impacts of health worker migration; review existing conceptual frameworks, parameters and indicators used for assessing health worker migration flows and for assessing dimensions of health systems; propose a conceptual framework and parameters for measuring impacts of health worker migration on health systems; review existing research initiatives on health worker migration in the region, the methodologies (design, tools) used, their limitations, and discuss and develop a shared standardised method for capturing evidence and analysing the impacts of health worker migration on health systems; and identify research capacities (research teams, funding, and political will) for the follow up work on health worker migration in the region, and a coordinated and harmonised approach to follow up research on health worker migration in the region.