Second Special Session of the ACTIVA-TE Film Festival at ISARC
The Alliance for Health and medicusmundi held, on Friday, September 9th, 2022, at 10:00 am, the second special session of the “ACTIVA-TE” International Film Festival
The Alliance for Health and medicusmundi held, on Friday, September 9th, 2022, at 10:00 am, the second special session of the “ACTIVA-TE” International Film Festival on the main challenges in the exercise of the right to health in Mozambique, at the Higher Institute of Arts and Culture - ISARC.
The second special session was aimed at ISARC arts and culture students, with the main objective of contributing to the sensitization and awareness of the arts and culture sector to activism and the right to health, and to bring to consciousness the important role that arts and culture exercise in the context of health and human rights.
In this session, it was projected the film ʽʽCalçasʼʼ (Paints), directed by Paulo Guambe, followed by a debate on the main challenges in the exercise of the right to health in Mozambique, which had in his panel António Mathe, human rights defender and collaborator of the Citizen Observatory to Health (OCS) and Paulo Guambe himself, filmmaker and university teacher.
The speakers António Mathe and Paulo Guambe were unanimous in stating that the projected film brings to the surface a little of what are the barriers that society in general finds when it resorts to public health services.
Paulo Guambe stated that the film starts from a personal experience that had several times when accessing health services at Maputo's health facilities. In this film, it is possible to realize that the right to health was often denied because he was in shorts and flip flops.
As far as it concerns, António Mathe reaffirmed that some of the challenges in the exercise of the right to health in Mozambique are related to illicit charges, the lack of knowledge of the instruments and reports of denunciation, the lack of empathy by health providers, the problem of obsolete and non-conditional infrastructures, the irrespective privacy of users, the lack of inclusion of people with disabilities, the difficult access to medicines in health units, among others.
Continuing, António Mathe mentioned that one of the ways to improve health services in the country is to promote the adhesion of the country's leaders to public health facilities whenever they use health care. For this expert, only then will they realize the challenges that the system has and probably from there will make room for the definition of better policies.
In his final intervention, filmmaker Paulo Guambe greeted this initiative and spoke of the importance of using cinema to talk about the right to health, as this industry has a great ability to raise awareness, raise awareness, and influence attitudes.
It should be noted that this film show is inserted in the "Activa-te" Campaign, which was launched last February by the Alliance for Health, to defend the right to health in Mozambique, in the areas of the right to health, Obstetric violence, Improvement of services to women victims of VBG, Rights and Duties of the patient, Sexual Diversities and Positive Masculinities, Nutrition and Community Health, focusing on obtaining positive effects for the strengthening of the National Health System.
This activity has been carried out with the financial support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) within the Agreement 18-CO1-1096 «Improving the population's health based on its Social Determinants, with special focus on nutrition, through the strengthening of Primary Health Care as the best strategy to ensure the right to health and the collaboration of civil society, research institutions, and the National Health System». The content of this news is the sole responsibility of medicusmundi and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the AECID.