Copasah

Case Studies

Title: Reclaiming Dignity, Justice and Wellbeing
Authors: E.Premdas Pinto, Chinnamma Muddanagudi, Sathaysree Goswami and Susheelamma Mallikappa

Health is increasingly being conceptualized as being socially determined. In the case of marginalized communities, social determinants of health  are not  confined  only to the biomedical factors that cause disease and morbidity alone. Most fundamentally, such disease and morbidity are themselves are a product of the structural barriers that they face. Most often these structural barriers are experienced as discrimination and are referred through the concepts of marginalization and social exclusion. Such processes  result in gross disadvantages to health, well-being, dignity and justice  of many marginalised groups to. The axes of marginalization and discrimination are embedded in the socio-cultural – political structures of society such as gender, caste, patriarchy, ethnicity, disability etc. among others.

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Title: Pourakarmikas March Towards Dignified Life and Liberation
Authors: Surekha Dhaleta, K.B. Oblesha, E.Premdas Pinto

This case study is dedicated to the members of scavenger community and their undaunting spirit, who have catapulted from the extreme margins, to march towards dignity and liberation defying invisibility, non-recognition and indignity

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Title: Women in the Lead: Monitoring Health Services in Bangladesh
Authors: Sarita Barpanda, Samia Afrin, Abhijit Das

Naripokkho is the first non political organisation working on women’s rights, liberty and freedom in Bangladesh. It is a membership based organisation, which was started in 1983 and its 110 active members provide the impetus for its work which is primarily executed through networks and partnerships. It works in all the 64 districts of Bangladesh through an alliance named Doorbar where the primary focus is on political empowerment and prevention of violence against women (VAW). Simultaneously, Naripokkho works on reproductive health and rights in partnership with 37 NGOs in 29 districts.

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Accountability and Social Action in Health – A Case Study on Solid Waste Management in Three Local Authority Areas of Zimbabwe 
Training and Research Support Centre (TARSC )with Civic Forum on Housing (CFH)

Solid waste management is a major challenge to most urban local authorities in Zimbabwe. Rapid urbanisation in the last decade, coupled with economic decline and social disruption, placed considerable strain on local authorities’ resources, resulting in their failure to provide adequate services to residents. By 2009, residents were discontent about waste management and the social problems created by waste dumping. To build capacity, strengthen accountability and facilitate sustainable options at the local level on solid waste management, Training and Research Support Centre (TARSC) and Civic Forum on Housing (CFH) used participatory research in 2010 to map the situation. Training and working with community-based researchers, TARSC and CFH identified actions for communities, the private sector and service organisations in three local authority areas of Zimbabwe (Chitungwiza, Epworth and Mutare). Researchers and civil society organisations met with the local authorities and industry and identified areas for follow-up action.
 
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Title: Citizen Monitoring to Promote the Right to Health Care and Accountability 
 Authors: Ariel Frisancho and Maria Luisa Vasquez

CARE (Peru), ForoSalud and COPASAH have prepared the case study on citizen monitoring to promote the right to health care and accountability. In the context of Peru where transparency and accountability is still a challenge, citizen health care monitoring is promoted as  a mechanism of citizen participation   aimed at monitoring and verifying compliance with the duties, obligations and commitments of state authorities and public servants in the health care of the population. Citizen monitoring promotes transparency and accountability which are essential for good governance and democracy.  The case-study is a demonstration of this process of citizen engagement in building accountable systems.  The positive aspects of this case study is that it  provides lessons  for the of universal health care and it focuses on the key importance of strategic alliances with public  and civil society  actors to strengthen the capacity of rural women’s agency and to address unequal power relations.

 
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Title: Claiming Entitlements: The Story of Women Leaders’ Struggle for the Right to Health in Uttar Pradesh, India 
Authors: Abhijit Das and Jashodhara Dasgupta

This is the story of the leaders of a women’s organisation, Mahila Swasthya Adhikar Manch (Women’s Health Rights Forum) in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. It recounts how a group of women from the extremely marginalised sections of society have become empowered and are monitoring their entitlements around health services and other services which are related to the social determinants of health. It describes the evolution of the group, its activities and some of the results of their advocacy action with a focus on their empowerment process. 
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Title: Community Based Monitoring and Planning in Maharashtra, India 
Authors: Abhay Shukla, Shelley Saha, Nitin Jadhav

Community based monitoring has emerged today as a powerful approach to make health services accountable and responsive. In India, the National Rural Health Mission has been supporting Community based monitoring and planning (CBMP) in several states since 2007, of which Maharashtra is one state where the process has developed with a definite rights based approach and has continuously expanded, based on a variety of innovations. As of now CBMP is being implemented in 13 districts, 35 blocks and 815 villages of the state, through the coordinated efforts of about 25 civil society organizations.
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Title: Empowering marginalized indigenous communities through the monitoring of public health care services in Guatemala 

Authors: Walter Flores,  Lorena Ruano

The result of this four-year process has helped CEGSS identify strategies that include systematic work at the community and health district level. In this report, we present the experience of our program for the period 2008-2011 and reflect on our strategies and decisions, accomplishments and the challenges faced. The document further discusses how the project is changing the existing power relationships and presents a possible way forward through the process of reflecting on the lessons we learned in the with an aim to highlight the sustainability of similar projects and the outcomes that can be expected.

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