News
ZIMBABWE ASSOCIATION OF DOCTORS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
zadhr@mweb.co.zw
Volume 7, Issue 4
October 2009
Human rights education in medical education
“The protection
and promotion of
human rights is
perhaps one of the
most effective
means of promoting health and human well-being.”
- Human Rights and
Health: The Legacy of
Apartheid (American
Association for the
Advancement of Science and Physicians
for Human Rights)
Inside this
issue:
Human rights
education in medical education
What is the way
forward for health
in Zimbabwe?
1
2
Prison Health Protection Programme:
Training on health
and human rights in
prisons
5
Harare medical
students and junior
doctors workshop
report
6
Health and human rights are essentially
linked. The focus of human rights is the
promotion and protection of the dignity of
human beings while health is concerned
with their physical and mental wellbeing. It
is impossible to achieve one without the
other. Consequently health professionals
should also be equipped with knowledge on
human rights during their training.
Although Zimbabwe has a long history of
human rights violations predating independence, medical and other health professionals
have not actively taken up these violations
and their impact on the physical and mental
wellbeing of their patients. This has largely
been the result of a lack of understanding of
the link between health and human rights,
the role of health professionals in promoting
both and a misconception that involvement
in human rights is equivalent to involvement
in party politics.
As the World Health Organisation (WHO)
definition of health aptly points out, health
is not just the absence of disease. It is a state
of complete physical, mental and social well
-being. The education of health professionals should therefore focus on more than just
morbidity and mortality if their practice is to
be about more than just the indifferent application of clinical skills.
Human rights provides a useful lens for examining the social, economic and political
issues that affect human beings and how this
impacts their health. Health professionals
will, through human rights education, gain a
better understanding of the social causes of
ill health and death and the role they can
play in addressing these.
As human rights has an essential contribu-
Medical students from the University of Zimbabwe
Medical School participating in and Health and
Human Rights Training Workshop for medical students held by ZADHR and Physicians for Human
Rights in September 2008
tion to make to the manner in which heath
professionals carry out their work, it is a
subject that should be taught to health professionals and on which they should be examined. Human rights education should also
be a required component of continuing
medical education for the benefit of those
who have not received this education at the
start of their careers so that health professionals are kept abreast of developments in
the field of human rights.
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) found that, under apartheid, health services in South Africa were
delivered in a discriminatory manner and
that training of medical professionals was
also discriminatory. The TRC concluded
that the absence of human rights training in
medical education left health professionals
ill-equipped to address these human rights
violations. Under apartheid there was little
or no documentation of the widespread human rights violations, with health professionals remaining silent about widespread
torture of political detainees. The racial
Saturday 28 November 2009
Workshop on A Human Rights Approach to HIV/AIDS
— Crowne Plaza Monomotapa Hotel, Harare — 8:30am to 4:00pm —
Speakers include Mark Heywood, AIDS Law Project, South Africa and
Dr Nelson Musoba, Acton Group for HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, Uganda