Rural Advocacy Partners

Community engagement is about understanding and working with your local community to improve health services or reducing the barriers to health in that area. This may be through a Clinic or Hospital Committee, the Ward Councillors and Traditional Leaders, Traditional Healers and others active nearby; as well as national organisations representing Patients Rights.

RHAP

RuDASA is a founder of RHAP and RHAP often represents us at National Meetings advocating for better health services, and better health resources.

The Rural Health Advocacy Project is a leading health advocacy organisation based in Johannesburg, advocating for equitable access to quality health care for rural communities in the whole of South Africa. Informed by the voices of rural healthcare workers and communities on the ground, partner organisations, stakeholders and research, RHAP conducts advocacy, generates debate, monitors implementation of health policies in rural areas, supports pro-equity government interventions, and rural-proofs policies to ensure that they are in tune with rural realities.

SECTION27

SECTION27 is a public interest law centre that seeks to achieve substantive equality and social justice in South Africa. They work in the field of access to health care, good governance and accountability with the NDoH and private health care. Health professionals and communities can contact Section 27 to alert them to service delivery problems.

ECHCAC

RuDASA is part of the Eastern Cape Health Crisis Action Coalition (ECHCAC), a group of organisations and individuals who are campaigning to fix the Eastern Cape health system which has collapsed in many parts of the province in 2012. They drive the campaign to fix health systems in the province, such as the lack of Emergency Medical Services in rural areas, by lobbying and working with the EC DoH.

TAC

Today the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) continues to represent users of the public healthcare system in South Africa, and to campaign and litigate on critical issues related to the quality of and access to healthcare.Through its branches and members the TAC monitors thousands of clinics and hospitals. Its members are the people who need the public health system to work, so they are the first to notice when it doesn’t. In addition to the large national campaigns, the local activism of the TAC’s members is the true life-blood of the organisation.