Board of Directors Bryan Haddon Kwame Adogboba Carole Baekey Gerald Bloom Nina Bowen Rodion Kraus Diarmuid McClean Jeffrey Mecaskey Ike Osakwe HPI Partners Operational team

Carole Baekey

Overview

Carole Baekey has 20 years’ experience in developing and drafting health policy, legislation and ethics in Sub-Saharan Africa and almost three decades’ experience providing legal assistance and related advocacy for communities experiencing marginalisation and discrimination in North America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Carole has worked extensively in constitutional development matters and developing health policy, legislation and regulatory frameworks. She has developed policy and legislation in the area of biomedical ethics. She has also lobbied legislatures and directed legal action reform. Carole is the Founder and Director of Baekey International Associates (1995 to present) and on the Board of Directors of Health Partners International.

Background and relevant experience

Carole drafted the Jigawa Integrated Health Systems Bill (2007) in consultation with stakeholders in Jigawa State, Nigeria, as part of the Partnership for Transforming Health Systems (PATHS) programme, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). She also developed district health system legislation in consultation with the Enugu State Health Ministry (2003–4).

In Malawi, from 2003 to 2007, Carole worked with the Ministry of Health to develop the Malawi Health Policy, including the country’s Biomedical Research and Ethics Policy, which addresses current and proposed practices related to human subject research study proposals. She drafted the Malawi Health Bill, which provides for an essential health package within the framework of a district health system, and she developed the Malawi Autonomous Hospital Bill and subordinate regulations, which provide for the management and administrative devolution on central and specialised curative services.

In Swaziland, Carole analysed constitutional issues and developed and implemented training programmes for human rights groups (1995–7).

In South Africa, Carole has worked for a number of provincial government ministries, including the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Ministries of Health. She carried out a number of assignments for the KwaZulu-Natal Ministry of Health (1995–2004) related to the need for changes to policy and legislation following the end of apartheid, in order to improve access for all South Africans to health services, and to improve the services themselves. Her work here encompassed the drafting of the KwaZulu-Natal Health Act, 2000, including regulations, and the Eastern Cape Health Act, 1999.

In the apartheid era Carole was founder and Director of the Community Law Centre (1989–1994), a non-partisan legal action and reform project designed to serve remote rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces. The project provided community-based and human rights legal education and services and developed policies and programmes with non-governmental organisations and rural communities. She was a member of the US-South Africa Fulbright Commission from 1988 to 2002 and was its Chairperson in 2002.

Carole’s pro bono work includes representation of the Adherence Support Programme, which provides training and support for roll-out of antiretrovirals in KwaZulu-Natal (2004–5). She has served on the Board of Directors of King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban, South Africa. Since 2002 she has also served on the Board of Directors of PeacePlayers International–South Africa, which uses basketball as a tool to bridge racial and cultural divides among young people and to provide critically needed life skills.

Carole has lectured in jurisprudence and international comparative law in South Africa and North America and has been involved in developing a range of legal education, litigation and human rights training programmes.