This brief explores socio-behavioural determinants including local knowledge, perceptions, practices, and structural factors influencing cholera transmission dynamics. The brief has been developed to support response actors develop prevention and control strategies to rapidly contain the outbreak and prepare for a potential scaling up of the response in view of the imminent rainy season. It emphasises the vital importance of these strategies being community-centred and identifies gaps in knowledge and evidence.
This study contributes to what is currently known about the experiences of girls in fighting forces as distinct from those of boys. It is meant to assist policymakers in developing policies and programs to help protect and empower girls in situations of armed conflict and postwar reconstruction. Within the context of Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique girls in the fighting forces have suffered major human rights violations, especially gender-based violence. The rights of these girls are under threat from their own governments, armed opposition forces, and, occasionally, by members of their communities and families. At times, girls are discriminated against by local groups and officials, governments and international bodies that are unwilling to recognise their presence, needs and rights during conflict, post-conflict, demobilisation and social reintegration.
Yet, within the fighting forces, girls carry out a number of diverse roles, including as fighters.
Despite expanding policy commitments in many poor countries, health care is often a failure at the point of delivery. Lack of information, poor enforcement, and power dynamics prevent those whose rights have been violated from pursuing redress. In Mozambique, grassroots health advocates work to address this gap between policy and reality by blending approaches known as legal empowerment and social accountability. They raise awareness of health policy, support clients to seek redress for grievances, and facilitate problem-solving dialogues between communities and health facility staff. In three years we have seen communities begin to overcome a culture of silence. Twenty-one advocates and their clients have achieved redress to over a thousand grievances across 27 health facilities.
These cases have resulted in improvements to access, infrastructure, and provider performance. Advocates have supported village health committees to transform themselves from collections of names on a list into active agents for change.
Dr. Francisco Songane was Mozambique’s minister of health from 2000 to 2004. During his tenure, he oversaw the introduction of innovative strategies to tackle malaria and hepatitis B. In addition to ensuring the inclusion of HIV treatment in the public health system, he helped galvanize community partnerships and addressed rural and urban inequalities, resulting in reductions in maternal and neonatal mortality.Since 2004, Dr. Songane has held prominent roles in the field of women’s and children’s health.
As director of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), Dr. Songane spearheaded the adoption of a resolution by the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council on preventable maternal mortality, as well as the subsequent development of technical guidance, putting this issue high on the agenda of both health and human rights bodies. He has also been a board and executive committee member of Gavi,
