EPN - Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network

A feedback meeting was held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 9th–11th February 2005, as part of work to increase the capacity of church leaders and church-related health services to respond to the massive challenge of HIV/AIDS treatment. The results of research undertaken in Kenya in May 2004 to identify starting points was fed back to a group of 42 people from churches, church health services, NGOs, and government organisations.

Please download:

• Kenya HIV next steps report [.doc 335KB] [.pdf 180KB]
• Kenya HIV feedback meeting agenda [.doc 49KB] [.pdf 24KB]
• Kenya HIV feedback meeting presentation [.ppt 1.0MB]

The meeting aimed to feed back the research results and also develop ideas and commitments to interventions that could be made in the future to increase access to ARVs through the church health services and with the support of the churches. Thus the meeting included elements to build capacity in project design methodologies for participants.

In keeping with the need for greater collaboration between ecumenical bodies, the participants from EHAIA and EPN discussed and agreed that the feedback meeting provided potential areas of collaboration where the different strengths of the two networks could be tapped. It was agreed that EHAIA, because it has a strong link with church leaders, would facilitate moving forward issues that are strongly linked to church leaders. At the same time, EPN would utilize its strong links to church health services to encourage closer interaction of CHS with church leaders. This has been clearly highlighted as a need in the research. This would, in effect, assist EPN’s effort to bring the issue of treatment literacy to these important groups. Both organisations (EHAIA and EPN) will share information about appropriate forums where issues of treatment literacy can or should be elaborated so that every opportunity to maximize the impact of churches and church health services can be utilized.

Organisations attending included: Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK), Anglican Church of Kenya Nazareth Hospital, CMC Hospital, African Inland Church, Anglican Church of Kenya, Redeemed Gospel Church, TransWorld Radio, Family Health International, Kenya Treatment Access Movement, WCC-EHAIA, Presbyterian Church of East Africa, Catholic Church, Coptic Church, Modu Health Management Centre, Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies, Mutomo Mission Hospital, St. Paul’s Seminary Limuru, Kitui Catholic Hospital, CORAT, MAP International, AWCIN, ANERELA+, NASCOP, USAID.

One of the main recommendations from the starting point research was that more efforts be made to increase lesson learning and sharing within the church and church health service community in Kenya. This inspired an agenda that focused on bringing people together to report on and share their experiences. As a result, speakers were chosen from those interviewed during the research and they were invited to contribute to the feedback by describing their experiences. The group heard a full presentation of the results as well as presentations from a variety of church and church health service perspectives.

First step to next steps

Overall and key lessons from the feedback of the research were agreed and ranked for importance by the participants.

1. Church health services and church leaders can and should work together.
2. You can start small and go in the direction of growth.
3. Information must be appropriate for those living in poverty (poverty-focused).
4. Train and re-train.
5. We can learn from each other.
6. With more help and support, both internal and external change is possible.
7. Individual actions count, and policy helps them to count forever. 

The first four lessons, having been ranked as the most important, were then carried through the feedback and future steps process.

Loaves and fishes

The speaker Dr Mary Wangai challenged the group on the first day to show what ‘loaves and fishes’ they had brought to solving the key challenges that were identified in the process of the research:

• Poor community and church ARV literacy
• Low provision of ARVs by church health services.

On day two, the group were asked to name what loaves and fishes they had brought, and they ranked the following as the most important:

• Information, communication, and knowledge – in that the information did exist, the communication channels existed and there were people who had the knowledge of how to use them.
• Care and treatment in church health services – in that the church health services (CHSs) were used to, and indeed saw their mission as, relating to both care and treatment.
• Love and acceptance in the church – Christian teachings are not in opposition to the expression of love and acceptance of people with HIV/AIDS.
• Existing finances and infrastructure – while not ‘rich’ in either of these two areas, hospitals do exist, as do churches; their facilities can be used in a number of ways and work can be undertaken under current financial arrangements.

See the report document for full details of problem tree analysis and force field analysis undertaken by the meeting participants.

Next steps developed by the meeting participants

Using a stepping stones exercise, the group decided that the following next steps should be taken:

1. Write-up of workshop (EPN)
2. Circulation of the report (EPN)
3. Identification of key partners who bring ‘fishes and loaves’ to the approach. It was noted that it was particularly important to find partners who were not ‘just in it for the money’, but to have partners that would be able to contribute to the project and carry out some activities regardless of donor support. Indeed, it was recognized that some partners would also be donors, both in financing their own activities and also central activities where economies of scale could be gained, e.g. information production. The partners will be drawn from the churches and church-related bodies.
4. When the report is received, participants would share it within their own organizations and look for things they can change without funding and also to increase institutional support.
5. First meeting of senior leaders who will be the partnership representatives, held to agree commitments.
6. Second partnership meeting held to receive experience reports and develop a detailed programme framework and budget.
7. Partners meeting with donors to discuss ways forward and further ideas.
8. Circulation of proposals and requests for funding.
9. Roundtable with partners and ‘signed up’ donors to discuss implementation.