TB/HIV Intergration workshop

On 22nd July,2009 NZP+ Lusaka held a workshop where 22 NZP+ members attended ,the last session of the workshop was a presentation on the stop stock outs campaign ,the presentation was done by casco Mubanga one of he country team member, in his presentation Casco introduced the essential medicine concept and the stock out campaign, it was mentioned that availability of essential medicines in clinics was key for opportunistic infections for people living with HIV, a discussion was held to make people understand what was a stock out, the consequences of stock outs of essential medicines and the role of the community in the stop stock outs campaign,also in the presentation Banza Chela from TALC took part in the presentations, in the same workshop Claudio a fellow from New York made another presentation on the Pill SMS week.

Claudio talked about the SMS campaign and the feedback received from other district that participated and he also echoed that this data was very useful for advocacy, he said advocacy was more meaningful with such data from the ground, in the same presentation Claudio briefly mentioned about the technical part of the SMS system, at the end Claudio shared a video interview that was done with a patient that had suffered from Malaria unofrtunately experienced a stock out of anti malaria from Chipata clinic where she went to seek for treatment, she was forced to buy the drug from the private pharmacy. The campaign was welcomed by participates who showed a lot of interested in the project and pledged full support for the campaign. Fact sheets that have been produced for the campaign were also distributed in the workshop.

MeTA stakeholders workshop

NZP+ Lusaka is a member of the Zambia Medicine Alliance Transparency (MeTA) Civil Society Organizations Coalition, The coalition held a workshop on were 14 civil society organization attended, a presentation was made on the stop stock out campaign, the presented covered the concept and aims of the campaign, this presentation Casco the stop stock outs campaign country team member asked the presented to join the campaign and push government to increase access to essential medicines. All the civil society present pledged to support the campaign, in the presentation another presentation was made by Claudio Midolo the OSI fellow who was in the country to building capacity in the country team on SMS pill stock out system, website and video shooting and uploading the video on the website, in his presentation Claudio gave an overview of the technical part of the SMS system and how the data collected can used to in the media
and for advocacy. Most participate showed a lot of interested in the SMS and made suggestion on how the SMS can be improved, suggestion were noted and appreciated and some them suggestion made were incorporated in the System and data collection strategy. In this workshop the stop stock out concept was introduced and a strong networking was initiated with the 14 CSOs that were present. The stop stock outs campaign country team will continue to work these CSOs as stakeholders in the campaign