15 years of APOC - World Health Organization

15 years of APOC
By Daouda Diop
How far APOC has come Onchocerciasis and gender
A new future for African communities...
Gender issues are now emphasized in all of the programme’s
plans and activities. This is all the more relevant in that
community ownership cannot be realized without the full and
conscious involvement of women and young people - women
being the most important here. Especially since in almost all
African countries women make up more than 50% of the
population. And as regards onchocerciasis, more than 61%
of people treated in meso and hyper-endemic areas in
fourteen out of the fifteen APOC countries carrying out
CDTI are women.
It is therefore urgent and most relevant for women to be at
the centre of the management of the disease at community
level. Indeed, ownership without empowering women
marginalizes the majority of the population.
Working to ensure that women and young people (girls as
well as boys) take up the responsibilities due to them, by their
sheer numbers and by the extent of their presence in
women’s groups and organizations, is the new leitmotiv for
APOC. To ensure women take up their rightful place within
the community and in community health management
institutions, become pillars of CDTI and work towards
community ownership and community self-empowerment is
now a major objective for APOC and all its partners.
APOC is fully aware that neither sustainable oncho control
nor elimination can be achieved without the full and
conscious participation of young people and women in the
management of onchocerciasis and all other community
health issues.
It is for this reason that APOC has developed a strategy for
gender mainstreaming in integrated participatory community
health management as part of the CDTI strategy. The
launching of the implementation of the strategy has started
to produce some promising results that must be entrenched
and extended to cover all regions of all 19 APOC countries,
18
Group of female CDDs
as well as the ex OCP countries that may be considering
elimination.
In the Central African Republic, in all five prefectures where
oncho control activities are carried out, action plans for
gender mainstreaming and promotion of female leadership
for equitable community leadership have been prepared.
These plans will soon be implemented in the areas and
communities concerned.
Male adults and youths, doctors and head nurses have decided
to associate women in all activities as CDDs by setting up
mixed teams to distribute ivermectin and carry out surveys.
One CDD and some female community leaders have started
a door-to-door campaign to sensitize the women, their
husbands, children and parents to encourage them to be fully
involved, with the blessing of the entire community. One
CDD started a theatrical group to sensitize the women and
men in the villages about the need for women to participate
actively in the fight against oncho and other NTDs at
community level.
This is true also of Cameroon where a pool of gender
resource persons striving for the promotion of female
leadership has been constituted. It is hoped that such groups
will become firmly established and will be extended to the
whole of Central Africa. The same movement is also on
going in Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria Equatorial Guinea,
Burundi, Uganda and will hopefully start in Chad this year.
APOC is fully committed to ensuring that women play a
major role in CDTI activities at community and national level.
The CDI strategy also provides them with a platform for
more involvement in the control of other NTDs.
Dr Daouda Diop is gender specialist /APOC
African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control