Health Rights Forum

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Health Rights Forum (HRF)

Health Rights Forums are formed with civil society activists and citizens who are interested to play an active role voluntarily in improving the quality of health services at the local level. The Forum acts as a robust, effective, and sustainable citizen's platform to work as a watchdog body. There are two Health Rights Forums with civil society members at each Regional Chapter, i.e., District Health Rights Forum (DHRF) and Upazila Health Rights Forum (UHRF). Some district forum decided to form Union Forum also.

Structure of Health Rights Forums

  1. Member of the HRF are selected from all strata of the society including profession, class, religion and marginalized and ethnic group.
  2. HRF is consisted with 13 members, with at least 4-6 women (minimum one-third of total member).
  3. Considering acceptability and leadership quality, members select a member as the Chairperson of the HRF.
  4. Executive Director or representative of the Host Organisation will act as Member-Secretary of the HRF.
  5. Duration of the Chairperson will not be more than two years.

Selection Criteria for HRF Membership

The person who meets the following criteria will be a member of the Regional Chapter:

  1. Permanent citizen of the district.
  2. Physically active and have the interest to visit adopted health institutions at District, Upazila, and Union level.
  3. Voluntary morality and have the interest to work with health institutions.
  4. Socially respected and free from any allegation of corruption.
  5. Politically non-partisan, having no direct or formal involvement in partisan politics.
  6. The person should not have any conflict of interest with health institutions.
  7. No record of conviction of any criminal offense.
  8. Have good social linkage.
  9. Have enough respect for women and women’s rights.
  10. Have a clear concept of citizens’ rights and responsibilities.
  11. Minimum 30 years of age.
DHRF Members

Roles of Health Rights Forums

HRF is principally responsible to carry out advocacy issues at the district level with secretarial support from the Host Organisation. This HRF acts as a steward of other civil society and youth forums active in district, upazila and union levels. It adopts an upazila for working area. Similarly, Upazila Forum selects a union where the forum works with one or two Community Clinics.

As a civil society forum, District and Upazila HRFs work with selected government health service providing institutions like District General Hospital, Upazila Health Complex and one or two Community Clinics at the union level. District Forum is based at the district level and visits the adopted institutions at upazila and union levels regularly. HRFs get support from Health Rights Youth Forum to collect feedback from the users, collate the feedback and do necessary advocacy.

Major activities of Health Rights Forum

Organisational FunctionEach forum arranges meetings considering the need and availability of the members. Member-Secretary calls the meeting after getting the permission from the Chairperson. The Chairperson presides the meeting. Members approve its activity plan and review progress in this meeting.
AdvocacyHealth Rights Forums do local level advocacy with the selected health institutions based on their observation, information, user feedback and experience to ensure better and equitable health care service, improve transparency, accountability, and peoples' participation in government health institution.
CampaignForums arranges different campaign activities to make mass people aware about their health rights and entitlements. As part of mass campaign, a forum can arrange rally, mass gathering, press briefing, local level planning meeting, round table meeting, seminar, distribution of Information Education and Communication (IEC) materials, day observation (e.g. World Health Day on 7 April), etc.
NetworkingForums pursue other civil society organisations (CSOs) that work for human rights and towards similar goals. CSOs take initiatives to work collaboratively with professionals like journalists, doctors, NGO communities etc.

Citizen's Voice