5. Essential Services
When a government provides quality public services they are taking a concrete step to fight inequality because these benefits are worth more to the poorest people in society. Governments who do not have enough funding from taxes need predictable supportive aid, which can be used to strengthen public systems, increase transparency and accountability and help create strong, fair tax systems to kick-start the way out of aid. Around the world, 72 million children are denied their right to education. Nang Ngeun (8) attends the Nadokkoun Primary School, Nadokhoun village, Met District, Laos. Nang’s school was one of three built by Oxfam in Laos in the last year. Remote areas of Laos are the poorest in the region, often with little or no external support. Oxfam works with remote communities to develop skills and infrastructure so that people can jump-start their way out of poverty.
John Sones/Oxfam
Everyone has the right to health care and education. Oxfam is working so that the poorest people around the world are able to demand their rights and access these services. Health and education are the building blocks for creating a life free from poverty: they can change individual lives, and transform whole countries.
Campaigning for Better Healthcare Access (NGO5) Oxfam wants everyone to have access to essential services. Our research shows the best way to make this happen is to focus on change within countries. We invest in changes that will have a lasting impact: working with communities and local partners; influencing governments on how they can ensure universal access to good quality health and education; and pushing for policies that contribute to this such as making services free. Zambia remains one of the most unequal countries in southern Africa. Although improvements have been made to the health system, such as making health care free for those in rural areas, there is still a long way to go: one in ten children die before their fifth birthday. Oxfam, along with civil society partners and networks, used the elections in 2011 as an opportunity to put health care on the national debate leading to some great results.
Nang Ngeun attends the Nadokkoun Primary School in Met District, Laos
The campaign ‘Vote Health For All’ engaged thousands of Zambians to call for better health care in a series of activities in local communities. We used Oxfam and partners’ knowledge of the country from long-standing programs to ensure the campaign’s objectives reflected the real needs of Zambian people (NGO4). Communities were empowered to discuss health care issues with candidates and were able to use this to make an informed decision.
Vote Health For All was a major success with the new government committed to several of the campaign’s key asks including the abolition of fees for health care for the urban population (people in rural areas already had free access) and a health budget increase of 0.7 per cent which amounts to $158 million in real terms. This will make a massive difference. The team is now going back to talk with community members to see if the policy changes have made a positive impact to their lives and which other factors still need to be addressed. In Georgia, one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, the health care system, along with other basic services, lacks the resources it needs to provide for everyone. Since 2008, Oxfam and partners through the ‘Future without Poverty’ coalition have been calling on the government to produce a plan detailing how they would achieve health reforms promised back in 2005. Then last year, as a result of the coalition’s campaigning, the government finally formulated a strategic plan for health care. The coalition is now working on a new campaign strategy to ensure this strategic plan is carried out and achieves positive change for people in Georgia.
Image from previous page: Assembling a water tank, Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya
Oxfam Annual Report 2011-2012
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