KELIN Shares its Experience in Health Systems Advocacy with Amref Health Africa

Amref Health Africa held a regional workshop, involving the Kenya, Uganda and Zambia country offices team. The workshop, held in Nairobi on 10th to 12th August 2016, discussed the implementation of a five year project on “Health Systems Advocacy for Africa. The aim of the project is to achieve sexual reproductive health and rights through strengthened health systems. The team focused on advocacy on human resource for health and commodities on sexual reproductive health rights, which are two out of the three pillars of the project.

Allan Maleche represented KELIN at this meeting. He made a presentation titled “Supporting the government to develop laws and policies on health.” He shared KELIN’s experience in advocacy initiatives in the development of the Health Bill 2015, the Reproductive Health Bill 2015 and the East African HIV Prevention and Management Act 2016.

He advised the participants to consider the following in their advocacy and initiatives as they roll out their project:

  • The team should be familiar with the laws and policies they are working on
  • The team should be familiar with the law and policy making process in their country.
  • The team should know the law and policy making structures and players in their country.
  • The team should build consensus with other stakeholders working on the issues the project is working on.
  • The team should consider partnerships with other players to cover areas that Amref does not work on.
  • The team should use social media and main stream media at appropriate stages to communicate key message’s around the project.
  • Litigation should be used as a last resort.

KELIN welcomes the opportunity to partner with Amref Health Africa on this exciting and important project that contributes to KELIN’s outcome on health policies, laws, strategic plan and operational frameworks that are protective to human rights and embrace the rights based approach at the county and national government levels.

To contribute to the discussions on this forum, follow KELIN on our social media platforms: Twitter: @KELINkenya using the hashtags: #Justice2Health; #HealthBill2015 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kelinkenya

For more information contact:

Allan Maleche

Executive Director,

Kenya Legal and Ethical Issues Network on HIV & AIDS (KELIN)

4th Floor, Somak Building, Mombasa Road

Tel +254202515790; Cell +254708389870

Email: amaleche@kelinkenya.org