HEALTH professionals have announced plans to launch a campaign dubbed Health Professionals Can Make a Difference, to increase their participation in the country’s electoral processes and defend their rights ahead of next year’s elections.
By Garikai Tunhira
Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) executive director Calvin Fambirai said the campaign, to be launched on Friday, would encourage members of the health profession to register to vote and participate in voter education as well as the voting process itself.
“We designed this campaign in order to kick-start the mobilisation of health professionals to participate in electoral processes as well as to bring to attention and profile concerns and aspirations of health professionals in the impending 2018 general elections,” he said.
“Through this campaign, we will continue to lobby the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Parliament of Zimbabwe to provide for mechanisms through which access to registration and polling services is enhanced for health professionals and detained patients in hospitals.
“We will further seek to facilitate voter education and for the capacitation of health professionals to observe and monitor elections during the 2018 general elections. Further, we will facilitate policy and engagement forums between health professionals and political parties in the run-up to the elections. It is anticipated that such forums will enhance health policy as a key electoral issue.”
He said they also wanted to make political parties prioritise health policy in their manifestos so that health would become a key electoral issue.
