Rights & Responsibilities Workshop Roadshow 2009

The Rights & Responsibilities Workshop Roadshow 2009-2010
Live and Direct: Outreach for Input on HIV and TB
Public Meetings in Kinshasa New Delhi, Jakarta, Nairobi, Maputo, Kampala, Kigali, Dhaka, Antananarivo...

The Rights & Responsibilities Workshop Roadshow is a series of public meetings and workshops in nine cities in Africa and Asia highly burdened by the TB and HIV pandemics.
It aims to mobilize people living with the diseases and health professionals to work together on a rights-based approach to scaling-up services.

The World Care Council (WCC) has been a global leader in driving forward a Rights and Responsibilities approach to health, advocating that people suffering from infectious diseases have specific universal rights to quality care, and have an individual responsibility to prevent the spread of illness to others. Health providers, both public and private, have the responsibility to provide people with the diseases with the highest possible quality of care, and the right to have the appropriate tools to do so.

The methodology of joining the human right to life through access to healthcare with the individual duty to act responsibly in face of a public health threat is one that allows people with TB, HIV and other communicable diseases to forge partnerships with care providers and programs. This relationship is a mutually beneficial one - people in need can work with providers to access better care and providers can work with patients to better succeed in managing the pandemics that impact on the populations they serve.

Over the last four years, a number of policy documents have been developed through the World Care Council's system of Outreach for Input, an open consultation process which allows many diverse people to become 'stakeholders and owners' of these guidelines. The 'Write Your Rights' campaigns have yielded Internationally endorsed Charters of Rights and Responsibilities for TB Care, WHO Guidelines on Patient Centered Care for Drug Resistance and other policy products. and is presently forging the PLHIV Charter for HIV Care. The Outreach for Input system of the World Care Council is an open tool for all, encouraging a broad based multiple drafting and editing process. If you 'Write Your Rights', you'll know them, advocate for them, and take pride in your contribution. Empowerment through ownership - it works.

Although these Rights and Responsibilities are noble words, written by those in need 'on the bottom' and endorsed 'at the top', they are just paper tigers until they are implemented in the communities they were intended to assist. Implementation requires bringing together all the stakeholders and key actors in a country, developing a plan, and then driving it forward - turning words into realities. The Workshop Roadshow 2009 aims to be an ignition switch of some of the motors of mobilization in key countries.

In the capital cities of India, Indonesia, Kenya, DR Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Rwanda, Madagascar and Bangladesh, one day of telephone surveys and interviews will lay the foundation for two days of meetings and workshops, offered to all those with an interest in scaling up care through a Rights and Responsibilities approach. These open discussions, drafting sessions, and inputs / presentations from both the community and professionals on TB and HIV issues, will provide a basis for developing a plan of immediate in-country action at the end of the meeting, and the engagements of dynamic participants to drive it the along the road to implementation. "This is really a strategy co-owned by all: top-down and bottom-up converging!" declared Dr. Mario Raviglione, Director, Stop TB / WHO.

Public Meetings in New Delhi, Jakarta, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Maputo, Kampala, Kigali, Dhaka, Antananarivo...

Description
The Rights and Responsibilities Workshop Roadshow is a dynamic series of events in nine countries, each divided into three parts or 'Acts'. The first, Act 1, is a day of Outreach for Input by special 'Community Call Centers', with a trained team using telephones for interviews and surveys, and the internet to gather baseline views on Rights and Responsibilities issues and to raise awareness. Acts 2 and 3 are the public meetings which follow a few weeks later. Each of these Meeting/ Workshop days reaches out to a different part of the broad base of people involved in public health, with the first day (Act 2) being organized for inputs from 'consumers' and those most affected, while the second day (Act 3) seeks the participation of care providers, health professionals, government officials, and the media.

The Roadshow meeting's collective and consensual inputs / outputs from the first day (Act 2) will be carried forth to the second day by a few community delegates from the local Roadshow Organizing Committee (ROC), while key experts from the second day (Act 3) will also present at the first. To more than just foster collaboration and stake-holding, the meetings will also aim to engage a mechanism for acting immediately, designed and developed during this two day workshop. The anticipated outputs include a Declaration and a draft Plan of Action, to be presented to the decision makers and authorities participating in the second day. All of which will be reported to the media at a Briefing at the conclusion of the events.

It is anticipated that each meeting will have 20-40 participants, by invitation, who have expressed an interest in advancing a Rights and Responsibilities approach in their country. Key actors, colleagues and comrades are now being invited to join a local Roadshow Organizing Committee (ROC), and they will assist in the planning and production of the events, and hopefully continue the momentum following these workshops. The R & R Workshop Roadshow is supported by USAID, TBCAP and the World Care Council. Other partners are now joining, and all will be highlighted in the communication campaign.

Objectives:
- Raise awareness of Rights and Responsibilities, and mobilize a partnership between community and heath professionals;
- Forge local tools for outreach, present existing recommendations and guidelines, and produce a draft Action Plan to drive forward implementation of Rights and Responsibilities policies;
- Present Action Plan, advocate for mutually beneficial collaboration, and secure agreements 'in principle' with both public and private health providers;.
- Engage the media and other communication services in the outreach on Rights and Responsibilities, in the interest of the nation.

Working with key partners in each country, from both the community of people living with the diseases, civil society, technical agencies and the National Health Ministries, the World Care Council, with support from USAID and TBCAP, will provide a platform where new tools can be forged locally, and galvanize many steel wheels to roll forward on Rights & Responsibilities. Key partners and comrades from the community, Indian Network for People living with HIV/AIDS and Club des Amis Damien in the DR Congo have helped frame this initiative through their networks and decade of experiences. An innovative system of SMS messaging, e-forums and a global outreach call center will seek to increase access to these meetings so that the widest possible participation is attained, and that advancing Rights & Responsibilities has many heads, hearts and helping hands involved, meaningfully.

The World Care Council is now in the process of engaging 'focal points' for the Roadshow in each country, whom will be coordinated through WCC branches DR Congo and India. These liaison activists will initiate local Roadshow Organizing Committees, which bring together the partners needed to organize the events, and work to continue the momentum afterwards.

Evidence has shown that a rights and responsibilities approach can leverage change in most countries, and when its tools are designed and held by those most affected, a broad based mobilization can be brought together to accelerate the progress. In this time where the understanding of mutuality and common cause is growing, it is the moment to roll forward on Rights & Responsibilities. To join the Roadshow Organizing Committee (ROC), contact us - let's ROC and Roll Rights and Responsibilities!

Maxime Lunga and Celina D'Costa Menezes

Outline/Updates: Download the details in pdf below
Comments, ideas, suggestions, critiques and contributions are welcome below.