A global health diva

Mar 17th, 2010 10:59 AM UTC
By Nora Coghlan

A month ago I had the opportunity to travel across Ghana and Sierra Leone with Yvonne Chaka Chaka, South African musical legend and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Despite her modesty, Yvonne would inevitably steal the show at every stop we made, bursting into song in schools, hospitals and factories at the request of our hosts.

Yet it wasn’t until last weekend that I witnessed the true power of Yvonne’s voice on the continent. To help celebrate her 25 years in the music industry, fellow South African musicians Lira and Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse joined Yvonne in Sun City, South Africa. Lira and Hotstix helped warm up the crowd, but it was Yvonne who convinced three First Ladies and a handful of Ministers up to dance on stage and captured the audience with films from her travels to meet women across the continent.

After keeping first ladies and ministers up all night dancing, the next morning Yvonne brought them around a table for a much different purpose: a consultation on integrated preventative strategies to meet Millennium Development Goals 4, 5, and 6, which target the reduction of child mortality, maternal mortality, and the spread of infectious diseases.

Integration might seem like a bland topic to follow-up a concert, but considering the occasion – the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day- the discussion was anything but boring. Women across the continent are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of integrated, comprehensive approaches to healthcare. Here in DC and in African capitals, programming and funding for health is often compartmentalized into buckets like HIV/AIDS, child survival and malaria; but for women, interventions like clean water, vaccinations, skilled birth attendants and insecticide-treated bed nets are all part of a single package to keep them and their families healthy. Although I was one of the only observers from the Washington, D.C. advocacy community, this conversation felt especially timely given the administration’s commitment to both an integrated and women’s centered approach in the Global Health Initiative outlined last month.

The forum kicked off with three presentations on integrated strategies. First, Debrework Zewdie, Executive Director of the Global Fund, talked about the Fund’s success at promoting integration and supporting health systems in countries like Ethiopia and Malawi, as well as its current financing challenge. She was followed by Sophia Musaka Monaco of UNAIDS, who spoke of the remaining barriers to achieving universal access to HIV/AIDS, treatment, prevention and care and warned that through disease specific interventions we are “treating our people like programs.” Finally, Dr. Eric Lugada presented on a pilot program that CHF International launched in Kenya last year with the help of Yvonne and a firm called Vestergard Frandsen launched last year in a Kenyan community. To tackle the three interrelated challenges of HIV, malaria and diarrhea, the program used a community-based model to deliver CarePacks, which include bed nets, “Life Straw” water purifiers, condoms and educational materials. You can read about it here.

After the presentations, a lively discussion ensued on the impact of poverty and disease on women and what needs to happen to make real progress in healthcare across the continent. The spectrum of topics reflected the diversity of the participants, ranging from greater accountability and spending by African governments and to better incorporating men into women and family health programs, to greater financing for integrated approaches through demand-driven mechanisms like the Global Fund. A need to address women’s health and utilize their role as leaders in their community was central to all these strategies.

The meeting concluded with a commitment by Yvonne to bring everyone back together in August for a second “Leading African Women’s Forum,” and to continue to offer up her voice for not just AIDS or malaria or child health, but for an integrated approach to address the health of women and their families. Ideas and opinions on all these topics will continue in DC and other hubs across the globe, but it takes often someone like Yvonne- a true global health diva- to bring them together and extend them to the communities where they matter the most.

TAGS: ONE, South Africa, Women