PHA-Exchange> Circle on Women Access to Health Care

[Dr Qasem Chowdhury]

Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights(WGNRR) expressed their
interest to continue to be involved in PHM with a focus on women and health 
issues.
They like to take the initiative to launch working circle on Women's Access 
to Health
Care. They are asking for suggestions and ideas. Please send your 
suggestions and
ideas directly to WGNRR with a copy to Secretariat. If any one of you 
areinteresed to
work on that circle please contact Sumati of WGNNR.

Following is the email from Sumati with my reply to her.

Dear Sumati,

I was expecting WGNNR will come forward with the issue such as Women and 
Health.
I happy that wgnnr has volunteered to initiate the working circle on 
Women's Access to
Health Care. I will circulate this email to PHA2001 at yahoogroup and will put 
up in PHA-exchange
for people to know your initiative. Kindly also contact other networks who 
are interested and working
on the same issue. We need to encourage formation of national circle on the 
same issue and develop
linkage for wider movement. Once you get few other names to work in this 
circle you can develop future plan of action. We hope by this time 
formation of International geographical circle which is the reference group 
of PHM will be completed and will develop a linkage with all the working 
circles.

Kindly ask Swatija Paranjpe to contact National Working Group (NWG) of 
India who already completed the formation of National Circle with Dr. B. 
Ekbal as its link person. Nationally she will have to work by having liason 
with that group. She can offer herself as one of the member of the working 
circle on Women's Access to Health Care if NWG identify it as one of their 
priority.

In Africa one of our participant Mwajuma Saiddy Masaiganah from Tanzania is 
trying to organise the participants. PHM is helping her. Kindly contact her 
and see how you can help her to develop stronger connection in the region. 
Her address is as follows:

Mwajuma Saiddy Masaiganah
Mwasama Pre and Primary School
P. O. BOX 240, Bagamoyo, Coast Region
TANZANIA Tel.: 00255 23 2440062
Fax: 2440154 E-mail: masaigana at africaonline.co.tz

You will probably get more names from other PHM praticipants who have good 
contacts in Africa.
As you have seen there is suggestion in the new structure to have four 
regions in Africa continent. We may as well identify four persons and I 
hope from Mwajuma's initiative we will be able to do that.

Thanks for reiterating that PHM is far from dying. What is needed with all 
our combined efforts is to make the PHM stronger and stronger.

In solidarity.

Qasem


Hello Qasem,

I have been reading the exchange on developments within the PHM, while we
have, as WGNRR, been trying to find out what our contribution should be
and what we can do given our perrinial staff shortage. We have arrived at
certain conclusions which I would like to share with all of you.

The CO of the WGNRR will continue to be involved in the international
circle of the PHM with a focus on women and health issues. We have one
Indian woman (Swatija Paranjpe) who is part of the close team who will
represent us both in the Indian region and internationally.

For the African region we are exploring possibilities of having one woman
based on the continent to take up PHM issues in a more consistent manner
over the next year to help build stronger connection in the region. We hope
to have some clarity on this by August this year. If any of you have
suggestions of how we can identify and support African women to become more
active on the PHM front please do let us know. All suggestions are welcome.

We would also like to launch a Working Circle on: Women's Access to Health
Care - one of the topics that have been listed. This is an area that we
thinks fits very well with our work and plans for this year. We hope to
take the initiative in this field and coordinate the Working Circle on
this front. Here again any suggestions and ideas are welcome.

For the time being I (Sumati) will be in charge of the PHM work from the CO
here. We hope to get a volunteer to follow-up the work on these issues soon
and by mid-year this year we hope to get a new staff member for this post.
Then I will be relieved of this task.

This is the situation on the PHM as far as we are concerned. No, the PHM is
far from dead for us and we are very clear that such a movement is an
urgent need of our times. That all of us cannot do as much as we would like
to see done is a fact we have to learn to live with. However, on the
African questions I would like to assure Norman, we as the CO of the WGNRR,
are very busy trying to work out a concrete strategy for the region within
the sphere of our work.

Good wishes and solidarity to all of you,

Warm regards to Qasem,

Sumati
on behalf of the CO, WGNRR