Christian agencies engaged with Primary Health Care Community Health Global Network members are...

Christian agencies engaged with Primary Health Care

Community Health Global Network members are feeding in to theWorld Health Organisation’s

thinking… Dec 07 and July 08

Nick Henwood www.chgn.org

• Presentation– Christian agencies and PHC– Themes– Ideas

• Celebration– A race through some CHGN project

snapshots• Preparation

– PHC re-launch, May 2009

Themes

• Documentation

• Be explicit about faith

• Think upstream

• The role of national churches

• Thinking holistically

• Staff training for excellence in healthcare

Documentation• Both successes

and failure• FBOs need to win

the respect of international organisations like WHO…

• More funding could be channelled through FBOs

Be explicit about faith• Faith motivates

FBO staff and the communities they serve

• FBOs (and churches) can hold in balance both prayer and modern medicine

Think upstream

• FBOs should tackle the ‘big issues’– Trade justice…

food prices…– Violation of human

rights…

• God is concerned with justice!

The role of national churches

• Local churches understand their own contexts

• Local Christians are motivated to work for change

• Volunteerism…• Churches should be able to demonstrate

accountability, and be channels for funds

Thinking holistically

• Change and transformation, not from projects, but from love and mutual respect…

• Mandate from Christ to care for sick and provide good news for the poor…

• This mandate motivates workers to keep on serving the marginalised.

Staff training for excellence in healthcare

• FBOs have responsibility to train their own staff well…

• Excellent opportunities (eg Jamkhed) and training materials (eg Talc)

• Aiming to be models of excellence…

• Connecting health players

• Strengthening community-based healthcare in resource-poor countries

Some CHGN members’ projects• Self-sustaining models for

health care in rural India• Providing Teaching-aids At Low

Cost (paper and CD-ROM based)

• Grassroots solutions to ‘age-old problems’… empowering others, even at risk of losing our own identity

• UK - India linkages for church-based care of abandoned children in Mumbai

Some CHGN members’ projects

• HIV testing and treatment for HIV/AIDS

• Community based Primary Health Care in Africa, Asia and Latin America…

• Empowerment and employment, with drug rehabilitation in Iran

• Prevention of sexual abuse through schools’ programmes

• Reviving healthcare in Sierra Leone, 10 years after disruption by war…

Some CHGN members’ projects

• Community Care Centres for people living with HIV

• Training programme for Zambian clinical officers to equip them to serve in community hospitals

• Raising ARV treatment literacy…

• Assistance to displaced people squatting on government land in North India

Some CHGN members’ projects

• Primary Health Care outreach in Peru

• Community participation for rehabilitation of war affected health centres in DRG

• Hospital and community based healthcare in North-West Pakistan

• Working with agogs (grandparents) to address unhelpful traditional practices in Malawi

Some CHGN members’ projects

• Editing / publishing / distributing health journals

• Wholeness through supporting women health volunteers - with an emphasis on prayer and Bible teaching (North India)

• Aiming to demonstrate long-term commitment as they support health programmes in east Africa… capacity building for sustainability…

Engagement withthe big secular agencies…

• CCIH and sister agencies(like CHGN) have diverse membership…

• FBOs are increasingly being recognised…

• 40-70% in sub-Saharan Africa…

• So how can we develop our skills in representing our membership to multinational agencies?

• …learn from each other about wise engagement with USAID, WB, WHO…

FBO engagement in the run up to re-launch of ‘PHC plus’

• 30 years on from Alma Ata (plus a year to get organised…)

• FBOs as lead players in 1960s-70s (and also today)… But what is the “plus”?

• Christian players in DG’s office at WHO

• Invitation to CHGN to co-sponsor a consultation for PHC-related NGOs (23-25 July)… What an opportunity!

PHC…Health for all…

• Member of family of agencies…InterHealth, AFFIRM and CHGN

• Seeking to be a forum for faith-based and community-based health programmes to share good practice with each other

• Seeking to represent the network’s members appropriately

• www.chgn.org

• Thank you from…

• Nick Henwood