Article by: Manka Martin Kway
Civic education may be defined as the process of educating citizens on their rights, duties and responsibilities to empower and motivate them to identify what areas of the political and governance processes they can effectively participate in and what they can do to influence political outcomes and thereby improve the quality of governance at both local and national levels.
DSW Tanzania through Healthy Action Project, conducted civic education training in three villages of Meru district to build capacity of
community members in areas of good governance, health system and to enable them to understand their health and civil rights.
Issues of transparency, citizen‟s participation and empowerment, government responsiveness, accountability, and equity were also discussed. After different presentations on health systems, good governance, health and civil rights by DSW, community members were able to identify challenges faced while accessing health services. Major challenges identified by community members include:
1. Inadequate number of medical personnel at lower level health facilities.
2. Insufficient drug supplies.
3. Lack of examination/delivery beds at village dispensary.
4. Lack of family planning services and reproductive health education.
5. Community members were unaware of the importance of contributing to the community heath fund.
6. Lack of standby ambulance to rescue seriously ill patients upon referral.
The district medical hospital was made aware of challenges faced by community members and service providers in delivering better health services to the poor. The district reproductive and child health coordinator said “If it was not for DSW, I would have not have known all these challenges because these villages are very far from the district hospital and we rarely visit them.”
DSW interventions in these villages have brought hope and change to the community because the district medical officer was informed of these challenges and in less than a week positive results were seen. District medical officer has offered one examination bed to Shishtone village dispensary. The bed was taken to the village on 7th September 2011 together with one mattress, bed sheet and different drug supplies to cater for three months – up to December 2011.
Apart from that, the district medical hospital has scheduled outreach activities in collaboration with PSI to provide mobile clinic services for pregnant women and children under five as well as providing family planning services and education from 23rd September 2011.
One of the biggest roles of civic education is to empower people, promote and help them understand their rights so that they demand the government to take responsibility or hold their leaders accountable. The project has done justice and built trust among community members.
This article is taken from the 3rd edition of COPASAH Communique, the newsletter of COPASAH. To read the full newsletter CLICK HERE