About the Public Health Program2007 Activities
In its efforts to establish stronger civil society advocacy, OSI’s Public Health Program has stepped up its investment in leadership development and capacity building, and increased core support for national and regional organizations such as the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network; the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and AIDS; and the African Palliative Care Association. It sponsored a conference in Cape Town in 2007 on critical health and human rights issues, including HIV and AIDS, patient care, harm reduction, palliative care, sexual health, and minority health. Rule of law and public health coordinators from more than 25 Soros foundations attended workshops for collaborative advocacy and grantmaking.
Access to Essential Medicines Initiative
According to the World Health Organization, 30 percent of the world’s population—estimated at between 1.3 and 2.1 billion people—lack access to essential medicines. In 2007, the Public Health Program launched its Access to Essential Medicines Initiative to support efforts to increase access to drugs to treat neglected diseases in developing countries, especially for marginalized populations.
The initiative promotes civil society engagement in work that focuses on three key areas: monitoring and ensuring transparency of the pharmaceutical industry, fostering models of drug innovation that protect public health, and supporting fair and efficient mechanisms to ensure availability of medicines. The grant program includes technical assistance in such areas as organizational development and media skills.
Health Budget Monitoring and Advocacy Project
National health budgets are telling indicators of the priority and commitment of a government’s response to health issues such as HIV and TB. The Health Budget Monitoring and Advocacy Project supports civil society participation in tracking and analyzing national and local resources for HIV and AIDS and other health issues. The project works to promote transparency of public funding, increase access to key health information, strengthen participation of marginalized populations in health policy debates, and increase the effectiveness, equity, and impact of health expenditures.
The monitoring project is engaged, for example, in a budget analysis of Kyrgyzstan’s mental health system. OSI and a Bishkek-based advocacy organization, Mental Health and Society, are calling for reform of Kyrgyzstan’s mental health system—favoring a shift in funds away from large institutions, which can perpetuate human rights abuses, and into community-based mental health services. The project provided technical assistance and support to train advocates on health budget monitoring in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine, and supported a number of advocacy campaigns in Africa, including in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi.
Health Media Initiative
The Health Media Initiative held a regional workshop in Johannesburg for journalists and advocates from throughout eastern and southern Africa. The initiative also worked toward improving HIV and AIDS reporting in China. OSI supported the Wuhan University School of Journalism and Communication to conduct a month-long training program for 20 mid-career Chinese journalists.
International Harm Reduction Development Program
An International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD) conference in Bangkok brought together harm reduction advocates and health and legal experts, including former police officers, from more than 20 countries to develop strategies for HIV prevention services to work effectively with law enforcement.
The IHRD report Women, Harm Reduction, and HIV underscored the crucial need for increasing the access of women drug users to integrated harm reduction services, drug treatment, and sexual and reproductive health care, and to ensure their reproductive rights. IHRD sponsored a panel discussion on women and harm reduction at the international Women Deliver conference in London. IHRD and its partners helped bring progress in drug policies and health practices in many countries, including China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.
International Palliative Care Initiative
The International Palliative Care Initiative (IPCI) convened multiple seminars and trainings in 2007 as part of its ongoing commitment to health care leadership development. The initiative held its first seminar on pediatric palliative care in Salzburg, Austria, bringing together physicians and health care practitioners from
every region of the world to discuss pressing issues on end-of-life care for children. IPCI also convened a two-day pediatric palliative care course in Tbilisi, Georgia, for 40 regional health care professionals. The initiative was particularly active in Africa in 2007, supporting the production of manuals for palliative care professionals and legal advocates, and workshops on access to essential pain medication.
Law and Health Initiative
The Law and Health Initiative (LAHI) developed a range of tools to support health and human rights advocacy throughout the Soros network. Chief among these tools was a comprehensive resource guide that includes fact sheets, jurisprudence, and case studies on six priority areas of health and human rights. LAHI also worked with Soros foundations in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, and Ukraine to develop a series of practitioner guides for lawyers interested in taking patients’ rights cases.
LAHI and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa provided unrestricted support and technical assistance to six AIDS and human rights organizations in southern Africa. LAHI also launched a joint initiative with the Open Society Initiative for East Africa to expand access to legal services for people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS in eastern Africa. An accompanying report found that rampant human rights abuses were fueling Kenya’s HIV epidemic, and urged the Kenyan government to make legal services a centerpiece of its AIDS response.
As one of the few donor-funded projects dedicated to health and human rights, LAHI has taken a leading role in advocating for human rights-based responses to HIV and AIDS before governmental and multilateral bodies. Advocacy included pressuring UNAIDS and the World Health Organization to include strong protection for informed consent, counseling, and confidentiality in their new guidelines on HIV testing.
In advance of World AIDS Day, LAHI and an international coalition of leading AIDS organizations issued a ten-point declaration, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS: Now More Than Ever, and called for a greater focus on human rights in the global AIDS response. The declaration focuses on stigmatized groups who are at highest risk of HIV, including people who use drugs, sex workers, incarcerated persons, women and girls, and men who have sex with men. The declaration has been endorsed by more than 250 organizations worldwide.
Mental Health Initiative
In 2007, the Mental Health Initiative helped secure alternatives to institutionalization in a number of countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In Azerbaijan, it joined with the Ministry of Education to create a pilot project to replace institutional care for children with a community-based system. The project is focused on closing one large institution and relocating children and staff to community settings. In Kyrgyzstan, the Mental Health Initiative joined with Habitat for Humanity to provide decent housing and support services to Kyrgyz families with mentally ill or disabled relatives.
Public Health Watch
Drug-resistant TB, found in 28 countries, is a growing danger for people who are HIV-positive. In advance of the WHO Euro Ministerial Forum on TB in Europe, Public Health Watch and the Roma Health Project of the Public Health Program prepared an “Offer of Partnership” between civil society representatives and European leaders, and stressed the importance of addressing underlying determinants, such as poverty and stigma, that fuel the TB epidemic. Public Health Watch also convened several sessions on TB and HIV for the World Lung Conference held in South Africa. At the conference, Public Health Watch coorganized a “Time for Change” satellite session, which was the beginning of a much-needed dialogue on developing alternative, community-based approaches to treating and preventing drug-resistant TB in southern Africa.
The Public Health Watch report series, Civil Society Perspectives on HIV/AIDS Policy, documents how stigma and discrimination against marginalized groups can affect national HIV and AIDS policies. The series looks at both developed and developing countries, including Nicaragua, Senegal, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam.
Roma Health Project
In 2007, the Roma Health Project and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria released a report outlining how Roma NGOs can develop and implement Global Fund projects to better address Roma health concerns.
The Roma Health Project raised awareness on how socioeconomic difficulties that disproportionately affect Roma can lead to higher risk for contracting HIV, TB, and other diseases. It collaborated with the International Harm Reduction Development Program to produce training seminars and resources focused specifically on health outreach for Roma drug users. The project supported the European Roma Rights Centre to produce a report on discrimination against Roma women in Serbia, which was submitted to the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
In conjunction with the Health Media Initiative and OSI’s Media Program, the Roma Health Project cofunded a number of media centers in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia, and supported investigative journalism on Roma access to health care.
Sexual Health and Rights Project
In 2007, the Sexual Health and Rights Project (SHARP) provided financial and technical support to create much-needed resources to help advance sexual health and rights. SHARP also supported the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center to develop and release a multilanguage toolkit on sex work issues for journalists, activists, and the general public.
Through a series of workshops and regional meetings, SHARP promoted the full participation of sex workers in developing and implementing policies and services that impact their health and rights. SHARP brought sex worker activists and health and human rights advocates from around the world to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they discussed responses to human rights abuses committed in the name of “rescuing sex workers.” Working with the Law and Health Initiative, SHARP held a human rights training in Thailand for sex worker organizations to help them better understand their rights in the face of routine abuse by police and health care workers.
