Dar es Salaam - The impactful integration of gender – along with equity and human rights approaches– into the corporate work of the World Health Organization is underscored as one of the Organization’s strategic priorities in its Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019 to 2023 (GPW13). To operationalize this impactful integration, WHO places mainstreaming gender, equity and human rights at the core of the “Leave no one behind” approach to universal health coverage and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

WHO Tanzania Country Office has taken a lead to build capacity of its staff for impactful integration of gender, equity and human rights in the programmatic and corporate work of WHO. A four-day practical workshop was organized with support of the WHO Africa Regional Office where key concepts, best practices, new gender, equity and human rights frameworks and tools were discussed. During the same interactive session, the Country Office team reviewed its Gender, Equity and Human Rights Action Plan which sets out strategic direction and priority actions for impactful integration of gender, equity and human rights into the programmatic work.

“As staff and partners, we need to build our capacity and continuously evaluate ourselves in how we support national programmes to ensure that women, girls, boys and girls and other vulnerable groups are not left behind,” said Dr. Zabulon Yoti, Acting WHO Country Representative when officiating the training on 16 August in Dar es Salaam.

In the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us about the importance of addressing the underlying health and social inequities in our programming. During the peak of the pandemic there were many more reports of domestic ad gender-based violence, disruptions of businesses and educational activities with significant psychosocial consequences and unprecedented levels of inequity in access to and control of health resources.

“The pandemic accentuated inequities and intensified the effects of inequities because of the drastic measures that countries and health systems took. We are forced to witness in a short time and in dire proportions what was already happening in our communities and places of work,” said Dr. Yoti.

The workshop also highlighted on the concept of intersectionality, which looks at how gender power dynamics interact with other hierarchies of privilege or disadvantage, resulting in inequality and differential health outcomes for different people. Intersecting factors include sex, ethnicity, race, age, class, socioeconomic status, religion, language, geographical location, disability status, migration status, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation and political situation.

The training was very well received by the staff, leaving majority with better appreciation of how gender norms, roles and relations affect health-related behaviours and outcomes as well as health sector responses.