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Country coordinator for the Zambian Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition Alliance on his broad view of health, addressing social justice and experiencing his first snowfall

Tackling the differences between a focus on health rather than health care has been a major theme throughout the Salzburg Global program Hooked on Health Care: Designing Systems for Better Health. But what has this session brought to individual Fellows who work in areas that aim to improve health?

William Chilufya serves as the country coordinator of the Zambian Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition Alliance (CSO-SUN) in Lusaka. “We are an advocacy team that is trying to put nutrition on the agenda for Zambia’s development,” he told Salzburg Global during the session.

“We’re looking at health as a whole and in particular trying to look at how to prevent people from needing to go to the hospital. How do we ensure there are fewer sick people in Zambia? We’re also motivated by how our health systems are more curative and focus on health care whilst little work has been done on the determinants of health.”

Chilufya believes that good nutrition is a natural medicine that can be an important way of preventing illnesses and conditions that would require hospital care. He also expressed the impact his attendance at Salzburg Global has had on him personally and what he hoped he could take back to Zambia.

“This session in Salzburg has been great, particularly the way it is trying to foster an understanding of the whole concept of health,” he said. “Many powerful names and figures with many expertise have attended, and speaking to them has been really thought provoking.”

Chilufya found it particularly interesting to learn about the issue of health as a source of social justice. Questions were raised in the session about how can we view health as global justice and how can we view health as a human rights issue. “I think even in our organization we say ‘Let’s invest in nutrition,’ but we really haven’t talked about whether nutrition is a human right – can we start viewing it from this perspective? Maybe that will improve our commitment and make sure we really address the problem.”

He also felt motivated by the overall message of the session. “There’s been a lot of information around health and health services and encouraging us to change focus and say ‘Let’s not only get hooked on health care but let’s also focus on health as a whole.’”

A topic that personally resonated with William was the issue of social protection and preventing those in poverty from becoming ill. “Many people in Zambia live below the poverty line, so what can we do to ensure that these people can have access to health? What can we do so that these people just don’t end up in the health care system and instead prevent them from getting sick in the first place?”

Chilufya reiterated his enjoyment in attending Hooked on Health Care: Designing Strategies for Better Health and expressed his hopes for the other Fellows. “It’s really been a fantastic journey in terms of furthering the understanding of issues related to health. I think I really enjoyed myself and I hope a lot of other colleagues have taken home the best feedback and information to promote change at home.”

It wasn’t just the program William enjoyed - he also had a great time in the snow.

“It’s my first time being in the snow and I’ve been really very excited. I’ve come to Europe several times but I’ve never really experienced snow. I will keep many memories of my time here.”

William Chilufya was a participant at the session Hooked on Health Care: Designing Systems for Better Health.The session is part of the Salzburg Global series “Health and Health Care Innovation in the 21st Century” and was held in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Health Foundation. More information on the session can be found here: www.salzburgglobalseminar.org/go/559