Health Action AIDS

Advocacy Partnerships in Africa

UGANDA

AGHA: Inspiring Results

PHR's partner in Uganda, the Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA), has helped to bring about some significant changes. They include:

Health rights are now on the agenda in Uganda.

• The Uganda Human Rights Commission has created a right to health desk
• Uganda's Ministry of Health is integrating human rights into its work
• AGHA has helped the World Health Organization to train Parliamentarians in health, human rights and policy.

The paradigm of medicine is changing to accommodate and embrace human rights.

• The Uganda Medical Association has started a human rights committee, which AGHA will chair.
• AGHA's health student leadership program—Students for Equity in Health Care (SEHC)--now boasts over 300 members and chapters at all public medical schools in Uganda.
• In spring 2007, SEHC held its second national AIDS advocacy conference, and the flagship SEHC chapter, at Makerere Medical School in Kampala, held its third AIDS week of Action— with Weeks of Action at Gulu University in war-torn Northern Uganda and at Mbarara University to follow later in 2007.
• The AGHA Stigma Task Force has trained over 150 health workers in 4 districts about stigma and what they can do to prevent it, critical to stemming the tide of discrimination and promoting patient rights.

Health workers and their patients have better protection in health settings.

• As a result of SEHC activism, Ministry of Health officials promised to vaccinate all health workers against Hepatitis B and to improve provision of post exposure prophylaxis for patients and providers at Mulago Hospital. 

The health budget in Uganda is increasing.

• In April 2007, the parliament announced an 8 billion Uganda shilling increase in the health budget—small in the face of a 200+ billion shilling deficit, but significant because the health budget was in fact set to be cut by billions and civil society, lead by AGHA, was able to convince policy makers to reverse this harmful course and help support the right to health.

Health rights activism is spreading across Africa.

• Together with the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations (IFHHRO), AGHA held a training and networking meeting for over 30 health rights activists from across Africa in February 2007, to create an African focal point for collaboration and information exchange. AGHA will host this Focal Point and help unite health rights groups from across Africa in education and action.