Date: Thursday 17 September 2009
Time: 8:30am - 4:15pm
Venue: Cresta Oasis Hotel, Harare

Through the Open Society Institute (OSI), the Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has received a grant to implement a national access to essential medicines campaign. This comes as the result of a workshop held last year in Nairobi, Kenya, where advocates from all over Africa met to devise an Africa-wide campaign to tackle the issues and challenges relating to access to essential medicines for the treatment of common ailments such as HIV, TB and diabetes.

The regional campaign was named the ‘Stop Stock-outs’ campaign and has been launched in four countries, namely Kenya, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. This one-day stakeholders’ meeting therefore represents the launch of the campaign in Zimbabwe.

The meeting will seek to engage all relevant stakeholders – who include affected communities, government, civil society and the pharmaceutical industry in an effort to make all aware of the urgent need to redress current challenges in guaranteeing access to essential medicines for all Zimbabweans.

After the meeting, various activities will follow. These include a baseline survey, community meetings, media campaigns and the development of IEC materials – all of which are expected to shed further light on the severity of stock outs of essential drugs within Zimbabwe. A national review meeting will be held as a final step in gauging progress in efforts towards eradicating stock outs, as well providing recommendations on the