Partnership to Develop Health Champions formed

UNFPA ZFFThe United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Zuellig Family Foundation (ZFF) formally agreed to work together to make health champions out of provincial and local elected officials.
Called “Strengthening Provincial and Municipal Champions in Health” the five-year leadership capability-building program will be given to the governors and provincial health officers of the ten provinces of Ifugao, Mountain Province, Albay, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Eastern Samar, Surigao del Sur, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and Compostela Valley.

Also benefitting from this will be 151 mayors and 302 municipal health officers and community leaders from the different municipalities in the said provinces.

The program will cost P84 million with UNFPA providing P65.7 million and ZFF putting in P18.3 million.

Recognizing the difficulties faced by the poor in getting life-saving health services, the UNFPA has been investing heavily to improve the poor’s access to these services and curb deaths especially among pregnant women and infants. For its 7th Country Programme, the UNFPA included strategic engagement of local chief executives to further reduce maternal and infant mortality and ensure sustainability of health improvements. Seeing ZFF’s experience in engaging local leaders to improve their health systems, ZFF and UNFPA forged a partnership to enable governors to drive reforms in provincial health systems and influence municipal mayors to take responsibility over municipal health systems.

The agreement was signed last August 17 in Makati City by UNFPA Country Representative Ugochi Daniels and ZFF Chairman Roberto Romulo.