Church-based organizations continue to be active in health care delivery in many parts of the world and particularly in Africa. In addition, many church-founded organizations are involved in supporting health service delivery in one form or another. Currently in Africa there are 31 Christian Health Associations and Networks and about 16 drug supply organizations. These along with members from other parts of the world will be the primary beneficiaries and collaborators in the implementation of the plan.

Strategy foundations

The new EPN strategy for 2010-2015 builds on the achievements of the previous strategy period while also addressing the factors that compromised success in the previous period. For example, EPN will review its approach to advocacy, investing more in campaigning in addition to lobbying. The organization will also tackle the issue of lack of skilled human resources in pharmaceutical services in Africa. The areas of EPN’s expertise can be used as entry points for addressing broader issues in pharmaceutical service delivery in the churches. The ultimate goal is to support the achievement of higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness that benefit the patient. In order to more effectively fulfil its mandate, it is expected that EPN will need to redefine its institutional setup, while remaining a membership organization. 

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Strategic priority areas

The following are the priority areas that EPN will address over the strategic plan period. These areas have been identified based on the understood need of the church pharmaceutical sector, the expertise within EPN and informed by the experience of supporting church pharmaceutical systems for almost three decades. In addressing these priority areas, EPN seeks to promote approaches that address strengthening of the health system as a whole. 

• Access to and rational use of medicines
• HIV and AIDS care and treatment
• Professionalization of pharmaceutical services
• Pharmaceutical information sharing 

EPN believes access to medicines is a basic human right and every effort should be made to ensure that all actors in the health sector take up the challenge of ensuring that medicines are available, accessible and affordable to all, including the poor and marginalized. Halting and reversing the HIV and AIDS pandemic is impossible without provision of the requisite medicines. The far reaching implications of the pandemic especially in the primary geographical area of EPN’s work make it critical that special attention is paid to care and treatment issues. Professionalization of pharmaceutical services and provision of current accurate pharmaceutical information are both important pillars in the struggle to ensure that medicines reach all who need them. In addition, as stated earlier, it will be necessary to establish the kind of organizational system that is required to fulfil this mandate and thus attention will also be paid to building a sound organizational system. At the heart of what we seek to do is to make a difference to that patient especially the most vulnerable at the periphery of society who has nowhere to get help. By their nature churches and church institutions have the poor and un-reached as their target and therefore it is under this framework that EPN seeks to make its contribution.

The overall goal of the strategy is that Church Health Systems are strengthened and increasingly able to provide just and compassionate quality pharmaceutical services. The EPN guidelines provide a good proxy for the nature of services being provided and the level of compliance of church health systems with selected EPN guidelines will be one of the measures of the overall success of this work. 

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