African Red Cross & Red Crescent Health Initiative 2001

Objectives

• Identify priority health problems
• Strengthen partnerships and linkages
• Focus on selected RC/RC priority health interventions
• Strengthen branch and volunteer capacities
• Ensure quality in the health services provided
• Demonstrate effectiveness and impact

Consensus was reached on the major public health interventions which African national societies should address as priorities during the next decade. These priorities include community level promotion and prevention activities focused on:

• HIV/AIDS
• childhood preventable diseases
• women and pregnancy related issues
• initial responses to accidents and injuries
  

The process also identified the obstacles to implementing large scale interventions with sustainable networks of community volunteers. This underscored the need to address capacity building issues at intermediate levels (between national headquarters and communities) in national societies. A series of four pilot studies is underway to identify and train coaches (key staff and volunteers) who will support the multiplication of community health prevention activities on a sufficiently large scale to achieve impact.

The decisions and experiences of the national societies led to a formal ARCHI 2010 strategy approved at the 5th Pan African Conference in Burkina Faso in September 2000 and again reviewed and endorsed at the 6th Pan African Conference in Algiers in October 2004.