A Listener Education Group in southern Rwanda recording its feedback for Urunana scriptwriters and health officials.
The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation provided a grant of £50,000 to support two projects in 2007/08.
Health Unlimited works in 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to improve the health of the most marginalised and remote communities who are neglected by governments and virtually everyone else. They reach 3.2 million people, including over 2.4 million indigenous people, each year through their primary health care programme and an estimated 26 million people through their health education radio programmes.
A Health Education Radio Soap Project in Southern Rwanda.
The project distributes radio-cassette players to rural women and youth groups so that they can listen to the Urunana health education radio soap that Health Unlimited started in 1999, and absorb the health messages that are woven into the entertaining storylines. They listen in groups and discuss the health issues raised by the soap (malaria, TB, AIDS, domestic violence, family planning, pregnancy and childbirth) and then feedback their thoughts to scriptwriters and health officials to highlight their own needs and improve health services. The project is addressing the lack of local access to health information, increasing the use of family planning and HIV testing services, and encouraging more women to give birth at health facilities.
Improving the Access of Indigenous People in Ratanakiri, Cambodia to Appropriate and Good Quality Health Care.
The emphasis of the project is to build the capacity of the indigenous people themselves to analyse their own situations, and to take a much greater role in influencing policies and practices that have a direct bearing on their access to health services, through a range of advocacy tools including filming. This is helping indigenous groups to address the high maternal and child mortality rates, and severe malnutrition in Ratanakiri, as well as the direct and indirect discrimination of the Cambodian health system towards them.
Visit the Health Unlimited website.