HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION

This programme is aimed at enhancing the knowledge and awareness on the right to health and accountability for health rights. ZADHR trains health professionals (doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and student health professionals), communities and prisoners and prison officers on the right to health and how to monitor government’s fulfillment of the right to health.

Through this training ZADHR provide forums for education and for these target groups to learn to develop policy demands for protection of health rights and transparent governance of the health sector. Training will be based on protections for the right to health enshrined in international and regional human rights instruments that Zimbabwe has ratified. Advocacy will be build on outcomes and recommendations from workshops and training and towards lobbying the Government to ratify human rights treaties that it is yet to ratify that impact the right to health and to domesticate those treaties that have been ratified.

HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION

The Objectives of the Programme Are As Follows

Increase health professionals’, prisoners’, prison officers’ and community members’ knowledge and awareness on health and human rights through training
Enhance health worker’s capacity to assess health rights and examine whether Government’s obligations regarding health rights are being met
Provide information and material on health rights for health professionals, prisoners, prison officers and community members
Give health workers and communities opportunities for their voices to be heard on health rights issues and facilitate their participation on health issues recognizing participation and accountability as key democratic principles
Train parliamentarians and officials from the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare on the right to health and rights based policy formulation/ reform
Zimbabwe’s health care system is emerging from a state of collapse. Within the context of limited resources, bad governance, the absence of a rights-based approach and the lack of transparency have expedited the collapse of Zimbabwe’s health sector and these are in need of redress
ZADHR is an association of health workers and recognizes the key role that health workers play in the realisation of the right to health and the reform of the health sector to achieve this
There is no training on the right to health within the curriculum of the medical school and other health training institutions in the country. As such health workers enter the health system with little knowledge on the right to health, its contribution to effective health systems and the need for state accountability on health issues. In its training of health professionals over the past 6 years, ZADHR has identified a lack of appreciation of what the right to health entails and an absence of knowledge on and ability to assess what the Government is doing to implement health rights. ZADHR has worked to train health professionals; however a knowledge gap remains to be filled for a large number of health workers;
Government does not carry out any training activities on the right to health nor does it encourage accountability for health. ZADHR has been working on educating health workers on the right to health since 2003. There are no other known organizations in Zimbabwe focused on training health workers and producing publications on the right to health for this target group. The Community Working Group on Health is the only other known institution working in this area but focuses on community participation. ZADHR is now collaborating with the Community Working Group on Health to share skills and knowledge and to work together to address the needs of mutual target groups; and