Health

Oxfam’s health programme addresses four broad themes:

• access to basic health services (including the issue of financing)
• access to essential medicines
• access to water and sanitation
• responding to HIV/AIDS

Oxfam programme work focuses on reducing inequities, including those based on gender, and improving the quality of services. Local projects support some of the most marginalised and impoverished groups. Others address the health needs of communities affected by conflict or natural disasters. Drawing on this experience and on research findings, Oxfam seeks to work with others to change policies, practices, ideas, and beliefs that affect poor people’s health.

Oxfam's strategy to respond to HIV/AIDS is based on mainstreaming HIV concerns into all programmes. This means that Oxfam analyses the impact of the disease on the affected population, and adapts its development and humanitarian programmes to address this impact.

In Southern Africa we are piloting programmes to integrate responses to HIV/AIDS into development work.

In India, Oxfam’s HIV/AIDS programme aims to increase access to prevention, treatment, care, and support for those infected and affected, as well as raising public awareness about the disease.

In Sri Lanka, South Sudan and Liberia, Oxfam supports the rehabilitation of community health centres and the development of basic services, including medicine supply.

In the Caucasus, Oxfam runs community-based health schemes which provide communities with treatment and essential drugs, and provide training for health workers. We operate a similar scheme in Yemen, where we are also training midwives and traditional birth attendants.

The Network for Consumer Protection, an Oxfam partner in Pakistan, promotes people’s access to, and the rational use of, essential drugs. In Afghanistan, Oxfam has ensured that basic health services have been made available to remote communities in the highlands.

Oxfam is widely known for its public health work in emergencies. The rapid supply of clean water to populations displaced from their own homes is vital, and Oxfam has particular expertise in this area. In recent years, major programmes have been established in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, in the Balkans, in Angola, and in the State of Orissa in India.