This Guidance Note aims to provide concrete recommendations to alternative complaints mechanisms on how to provide safe, accessible and effective remedies for vulnerable and key populations who experience health rights violations.
Alternative complaints mechanisms are, for the present purposes, understood as those processes identified to be able to receive and determine complaints relating to health care outside of formal court procedures. These include healthcare regulatory bodies, such as health professions councils and nursing councils; decentralised complaints processes, such as complaints processes within ministries of health or health facility-based complaints mechanisms; and national human rights commissions and ombudspersons.