Commemoration of The World Health Day 2023: HEALTH For ALL in Uganda.

THE WORLD HEALTH DAY 2023

DR. RONALD KASYABA

UGANDA CATHOLIC MEDICAL BUREAU, KAMPALA – UGANDA.

EMAIL: rkasyaba@ucmb.co.ug.

“HEALTH FOR ALL” IN UGANDA:

Realistic Achievement through Strong Partnerships and Genuine Collaboration with the Faith-Based Health Sector.

In 1977, the World Health Assembly (WHA) proposed a primary social target for all governments, international organisations and the global community: “To enable all of the world’s citizens to enjoy, by 2000, a level of health that would allow them to lead a socially active and economically productive life”.

This social target of “Health for All” emphasised the attainment of the highest possible level of health by societies, as a basic human right, and observing ethical principles in health policy making, health research and service provision.

The then World Health Organisation Director General (1973-1983) Halfdan Mahler, defined Health For All as “health, to be brought within reach of everyone in a given country. And in this case “health” meant a personal state of well-being, not just the availability of health services – so Health For All was defined as a state of health that enables a person to lead a socially and economically productive life.

This holistic concept implied the removal of the obstacles to health – that is to say, literacy for all, the elimination of malnutrition, ignorance, contaminated drinking water and unhygienic housing – quite as much as it does the solution of purely medical problems such as a lack of healthcare workers, hospital beds, medicines and health commodities and vaccines and it also meant that health was to be regarded as an objective of economic development and not merely as one of the means of attaining it.

Health For All was a symbolic determination of countries to provide an acceptable level of healthful living to all people.

The Health For All concept was concretised in 1978 with the Alma Ata declaration which focused on primary health care as a means to achieving health for all, with a focus on community participation; consideration of community needs and priorities, their values and their vision for a truly functional care system—seen as the guiding principles.

In Uganda the concept was adopted in 1999 by enacting relevant national health policies and strategies, and subsequently, community empowerment for the development of health structures and systems that promised the delivery of community health. The 2001 Uganda Village Health Teams (VHTs) Strategy was a foundational landmark for community health systems, aimed at harmonizing the effective delivery of health programs at the village level. Village Health Teams are Community Health Workers (CHWs), defined by the WHO as “members of the community who are selected by, and accountable to the communities where they work; are supported by the health system; and receive less training than formally trained health workers.”………Download full article