For some months now, as we informed you through this blog last November, we’ve been into the production of an audiovisual documentary on the implementation of the Primary Health Care (PHC) in Mozambique. We expect to be able to release it soon, in the framework of “Health, Rights, Action!”, the Health Film Festival we are at the moment organising within the campaign “Right to Health in Africa” to be launched within the next two months ( i.e. May and June).

The documentary intends to show what the real situation of health care is like in a country like Mozambique, one of the poorest in the world and with a high dependency on funding sources coming from international donors. This explains why, in spite of its commitment to the Primary Health Care Model defined by the WHO in the Alma Ata Conference in 1978, reality is dramatically different. Can a country consider itself sovereign when it depends greatly on funds provided by international donors? Can a government plan in a long-term basis when the total amount of money it can count on is unknown? How can hundreds of donors, NGOs and institutions operating in the health sector coordinate with one another? And what effect does all of this have on the health of Mozambican women and men?

By the means of this documentary, we will try to answer the above questions as well as some others, and get to know the real situation of the implementation of PHC principles in this African country which, all differences aside, may be extrapolated to other impoverished countries. Or may be not?

With colleagues from Kanaki Films, the audiovisual production company which recently won the 2014 Goya Award for “Minerita”, a short film documentary on women who live in Potosí, Bolivia and work at the Cerro Rico Mines. We have been working on this project for months now and after the shooting, the film is now being edited. We take advantage of this occasion to congratulate Kanaki Films once more for such a well-deserved prize on a job well-done denouncing injustices which, unfortunately enough, happen in so many places throughout the planet.

But stay tuned because we will soon tell you the date of the premiere and upload audiovisual materials for you to enjoy. For the moment, here are some photos from the shooting in Maputo and Cabo Delgado.

Translated from Spanish by Sílvia Aymerich