Mother administers ORS to her child. ICDDR,B Hospital Dhaka © Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Prashant Panjiar
As the world learns to live with COVID, ColaLife is re-starting its advocacy work aimed at making co-packaged ORS and Zinc the “go-to” treatment for childhood diarrhoea. This builds on our successful application in 2019 for the World Health Organisation, WHO, to change the global Essential Medicines List to include co-packaged ORS and Zinc.
A key part of our strategy is to work with others to establish the global ORS/Zinc Co-pack Alliance (ORSZCA) to promote this vital change from WHO. We are currently acting as a ‘start-up catalyst’ for ORSZCA, bringing key actors around a vision we can all share.
We urge all ColaLife supporters to join ORSZCA. You can sign up here. By signing up you add to the power and credibility of ORSZCA and will be able to contribute to its mission. ORSZCA will be launched on 15-Sep-21 during the week of the UN General Assembly.
Today (17-Aug-21) ORSZCA put out a call for co-chair nominations. You can nominate here. Self-nominations are welcomed. You should consider nomination if you or a colleague would benefit from being at the helm of an alliance to take forward the new WHO recommendation that ORS and Zinc should be co-packaged for children’s diarrhoea. Co-chair nominations close on 25-Aug-21.
The role of the ORSZCA Co-chairs will carry significant influence and involve participation at major international, regional, and national child survival and diarrhoea fora. Whilst not remunerated, Co-chair roles will not be time-consuming or onerous (eg, 4-6 Zoom meetings a year). The role would also strengthen the child survival advocacy and communications work that Co-chairs are likely to be doing anyway as part their own organisations, and bring with it the contacts, potential partnerships and profile that are so important to increase the impact of existing programmes and for new project development.
Co-chair activities will be supported by a strong ORSZCA secretariat provided by ColaLife which will include meeting scheduling and report writing, documenting the multi-year strategy and annual workplan decided by the alliance, website maintenance and social media, free resources including the ColaLife Playbook and more.
Please nominate yourself or others here by 25-Aug-2021.
This invitation was first sent out through the ORSZCA mailing list. To be added to this mailing list please sign up here.
This sounds interesting, but how will ORSZCA work to achieve their aims? Letter writing?
LLK
Thanks for your comment.
Letter writing will be a part of it. We are currently asking members to write to the Global Finance Facility (GFF) to ask them to bring their funding in line with the new global recommendation that both ORS and Zinc should be given and that these should be co-packaged. At the moment the GFF just talks about ORS. The template letter is here.
But it won’t just be letter writing. The act of pulling key players into ORSZCA will help align efforts behind the new recommendation. Our strategy is here.