Senior MDC Officials Retain Top Health Posts
5 November 2019
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Farai Dziva|Senior MDC officials, Honourable Ruth Labode and Honourable Blessing Chebundo retained top posts at the Africa Wide, Network of Parliamentary Committees of Health (NEAPACOH) at its General Assembly in Uganda.

See statement below :
Zimbabwe’s Honourable Ruth Labode, and Blessing Chebundo were retained into the ‘all important, and powerful executive board of the Africa Wide, Network of Parliamentary committees of health (NEAPACOH) at its General Assembly (GA) held from 29th October, to 1st November 2019, at the Speke Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort, Great Lakes, Kampala Uganda. Neapacoh GA is held every 3 years.

Hon Chebundo is the founding chairperson (2003), who, at the request of the Network, remained and led it up to this 2019 General Assembly, when he was requested to remain in the Executive Board as Ex-officio/Advisor. Doctor Labode (Zimbabwe’s chairperson for Portfolio Committee for health) was re-elected to represent the SADC region. She had been an executive board member in the last term. Hon Moshoeshoe from Lesotho was elected chairperson, deputized by Hon member from Senegal. Other executive members came from Malawi; Niger; Gambia; South Sudan; Tanzania; North Africa; and Central Africa.

NEAPACOH is a network of Parliamentary Committees on Health from across all the African countries, who have come together to pursue issues on Health.

The major aim of NEAPACOH is to nurture a culture of health as a basic human right as well as establish consistent collaboration among Parliamentary Committees on Health in Africa as a means of achieving individual and regional objectives of health for all, and through the promotion of community participation and involvement in public health issues affecting the populations of Africa. To strengthen linkages with key stakeholders including civil society organizations and state and non-state professionals in Health at all levels in order to increase health promotion, strengthen public participation, provide leadership and enhance responses to Health challenges including HIV and AIDS, Reproductive Health, Family Planning, Health financing etc.

The NEAPACOH October 2019 meeting {THEMED: “Building the capacity of African policy makers for enhanced implementation of International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Point of Action (PoA) and improved reproductive health outcomes: Challenges and Opportunities} organized in conjunction/collaboration with Partners in Population and Development Africa Regional Office (PPD ARO), The meeting participants brought together MPs who are members of the health committees of each parliament. The chairpersons of each country lead the country delegation that includes at least 3 MPs, the Committee Clerk/researcher. Development Partners, Civil Society Organizations for health, and other stakeholders involved in health also attend the meetings.

The following Op-ed (NEAPACOH Op-ed 2019) presented by the founding chairperson, Hon Blessing Chebundo, summarises what the network is all about: where it is coming from: the path traversed: where it is; and the trajectories:

African parliaments networking to ensure delivery of key health goals:-

One reason why many of our health policies fail to be fully implemented in our continent is that we lack a robust mechanism to make sure of this. Parliaments play a key role in this. They provide a link between government and citizens on laws and treaties, budgets and in overseeing in implementation of national programmes. In the early 1990s, most African countries initiated reforms for their parliaments to play a more effective and visible role in these functions.

The idea to bring the Portfolio Committees on health in the region together was first mooted in 2003, in part due to falling budget allocations to health, to the devastating impact of AIDS and to evident inequalities in access to funds and services. We recognized that as members of parliament (MPs) we needed to use our representative mandate to communicate social expectations and strengthen social voice and power in health. A core group of MP used own resources to visit other parliaments in the region to share the idea and listen to the feedback. The network was finally launched in 2005 as the Southern and East Africa Parliamentary Committees on Health (SEAPACOH).

Today we have widened to all of Africa and are the Network of African Parliamentary Committees on Health (NEAPACOH).

So far we have active participation from Angola, Botswana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Democratic People’s Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Kingdom of Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and we welcome other parliamentary committees on health in the continent.

Since 2008 and with technical partners like EQUINET and Partners in Population and Development Africa Regional Office (PPDARO), the network has annually brought together the health committee chairpersons, clerk and several other MPs from committees across the continent. This provides a forum for parliamentary committees on health to share concerns, unify voice on common concerns and calls for action, to advocate for health as a fundamental human right and promote democratic principles in health, including in our engagement with global processes. It also allows us to share promising practice and lessons learned.

Strategically, we use the annual conference to identify common challenges and resolve on areas for action and on commitments that national health committees/delegations undertake to implement and report progress on at the next conference. We have found that identifying joint areas of action that brings us on the same ‘wave length’ strengthens our effectiveness, individually and collectively. The experiences, views and success stories that we share inspire and inform the individual committees.

For example from 2005 we took up a common cause on advocating our Ministries of Finance to meet the Abuja commitment of 15% of the government budget going to health, that raised attention to this issue and contributed to improved allocation in a number of countries. We also raised issues that affect other sectors and committees, such as the positions on intellectual property that are needed to support access to medicines.

We produced with EQUINET parliamentary briefs on international treaties affecting health and other health issues that are common for all parliaments in the region. We have in the process built solidarity and collaboration with civil society organizations and regional networks, and with health professionals, academics, non-state actors, research institutes and international agencies. This has enabled us to better understand and synergize our different but complementary roles across all actors to ensure we deliver on social values and policy commitments, such as on health equity.

In our annual conferences jointly with PPDARO, we have identified some key areas of attention and work for the coming years.

Building the capacity of African policy makers for reproductive health and family planning: looking at challenges and Opportunities for Parliaments to enhance RH&FP: noting the importance for all MPs to appreciate that the issue of RH and FP has a direct bearing on several health outcomes: on population growth, and developments.

Some of the areas of attention are platforms we are sustaining from prior years, including to: facilitate greater public participation in health; to pursue and monitor achievement of equity in health; to advocate for improved health budgets and financing (in line with the Abuja commitment).

We agreed, further, to evaluate how far our governments have ratified and domesticated health related treaties and to engage on how far actions have been institutionalized and implemented to advance Universal Health Coverage and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that affect health, including within parliament. We see a need to mainstream the SDGs within the diverse areas of work of parliament, including the public information and consultation for them, and would want to spearhead work on this in health.

We also plan to develop a handbook for African parliamentary health committee members as a practical resource to support their role.

The previous conferences also raised a proposal for NEAPACOH to work with technical partners to evaluate how effectively parliamentary committees are taking forward resolutions, to understand the barriers and support practice. We will do this by visiting a selection of member committees in their countries before the next meetings.

The process of building this network has itself been a learning experience. Indeed we understand that the longevity of this network of parliamentary committees is unique in the continent, outside the formal all parliament unions. We have grown stronger over the years building on our constitution and founding values, and have a board of serving MPs, and past serving MPs from all five African regions chosen in our annual general assembly/conferences.

Over the 16 years since we were formed we have benefited from perseverance of leadership and retention of key founding personnel, from sound founding principles, and from a consistent collaboration with key technical partners in the region. At the same time we still have much to do to deliver on our mandate, to be more robust and effective at national, regional and continental level to protect shared health values and to play our role in ensuring that they are delivered on in practice.

Hon Chebundo also specializes in: Local governance: Peace Advocacy: HIV/AIDS policy development: Anti-Corruption Activism: Security Intelligence.