People’s Health Movement: One year after the CuencaDeclaration.
[PHM plans to make yearly updates after each of its people’s health
assemblies every five years. PHA II was held in Ecuadora year ago where
the Cuenca Declaration was approved unanimously by 1,400 participants. The
latter reiterated PHM’s adherence to its People’s Charter for Health
(Bangladesh, 2000) and set the course for our movement for the next five
years,
see http://www.phmovement.org ].
Considering that:
1. Health still stands high on the international development agenda
and calls for a major push ahead –now!
2. The roots of most health inequities are unchanged: they are social
and political.
3. Socially-conditioned health inequalities continue to be an
important political issue.
4. The social determinants of health are still not being incorporated
into planning in too many countries in the world.
5. The choice of vocabulary these days more and more calls for the
use of ‘social justice’ and ‘right to health’ as opposed to ‘efficiency’
and cost-effectiveness’.
6. Health care interventions targeted at disadvantaged groups still
only seek to repair the damage inflicted by social inequity.
7. Health and ill-health continue to be the result of the prevailing
social production process --and that the same social production process
still is delivering an unfair health care system.
8. The prevailing health sector reform approaches have only attempted
to target those worst off in relation to health care thus helping only a
really small part of the population; this has resulted in strategies that
focus primarily on targeted interventions which simply manage the
consequences of poverty. These targeted interventions of ‘health for the
poor’ continue to legitimize poverty.
9. A veritable social gradient in the access to health is the norm in
most countries in the world.
10.The ongoing social exclusion agenda of the rich is intimately linked to
health inequities.
11.Universal health care coverage programs are still seen as too costly by
the Establishment and the provision of health services is not yet seen as
a collective social responsibility.
12.The distribution of health resources continues to be highly
inequitable.
13.Countries with highly authoritarian regimes still have unresponsive
governance structures that frustrate efforts to engage in a true policy
dialogue on health issues and to come up with viable recommendations.
14.The existing barriers to a true health dialogue with authorities are
mostly in the political arena and are related to power (a dialogue among
unequals).
15.It is not primarily a lack of knowledge that has hampered action on the
root causes of ill-health.
16.Policy failure in health is not primarily a symptom of ignorance, but
the logical consequence of existing unequal power relations.
17.Certain influential constituencies derive benefit from the status quo
we observe on global health matters.
18.Physicians continue to maintain a monopoly over the authoritative
discourse and are reluctant to see this control slip away from them.
19.Various other health providers deriving profit from patient care are
also resisting change. But resistance also comes from corporate and
commercial interests.
20.Corporations continue to fight government regulations and controls over
labor practices, workplace safety and environmental impact of their
activities….and do anything they can to minimize their taxes.
21.PRSPs have not resulted in changes in the neoliberal model and have had
only negligible effect on Health For All --with asymetric power
relations remaining pretty much as they were before.
22.In 2006, as before, IFIs, multilateral and bilateral health and other
development agencies are strongly influenced by corporate agendas.
23.Governments still justify their policies in terms of economic gains
rather than in terms of ethical arguments (For them, what best makes them
listen is the argument of Money).
24.Public health scientists continue to believe that they can influence
policy simply by providing government officials with solid scientific
evidence when sound evidence does not possess an inherent power to spur
real change.
PHM thus re-commits itself to:
1. To put all its energies in furthering the Global Right to Health
Care Campaign being launched since Cuenca(July 2005).
2. To continue to aim at the root causes of preventable ill-health,
malnutrition and health inequalities in all its advocacy work.
3. To forcefully advance a pro-equity agenda oriented towards
practical action.
4. To ensure that the social determinants of ill-health are
sustainably anchored in the policies of countries worldwide.
5. To work to reduce gradients of wealth and power by working with
its constituent grassroots organizations for them to demand redistribution
processes are introduced.
6. In the same line, to work to reduce inequities in power; to
decrease the population’s exposure to health-damaging factors; to lessen
the vulnerability of disadvantaged people; and to reduce the unequal
consequences of ill-health.
7. To promote universal as opposed to targeted health and nutrition
programs.
8. To contribute to fill the gaps in the scientific evidence base
related to social and political determinants of ill-health and
malnutrition and on effective, people-centered policies and interventions
to address them.
9. To become a protagonist in exerting political pressure in the
competition for more resources for primary health care.
10.To demand full political accountability of duty-bearers in the health
sector.
11.To actively lobby for a specific WHO-internal action agenda that
incorporates PHM’s key recommendations into policy.
12.To engage additional civil society groups as active partners whenever
they fully endorse PHM’s People’s Charter for Health.
13.To open channels of strategic dialogue with key players including the
needed organized confrontation with G8 policies detrimental to PHM’s
principles.
14.To work on programmatic proposals for interventions in each country
that reduce health inequalities through action on social and political
factors affecting the fulfillment of the right to health.
15.To tirelessly work as anti-war activists, staying engaged in current
world conflicts, specifically condemning aggressor and occupying forces,
and the health atrocities being committed. (PHM considers the recent
Israeli aggression in Lebanoninhuman and strongly condemns it; PHM regrets
the global silence in speaking up with one voice against it. It affirms
its solidarity with the Lebanese people).
Therefore:
Cognizant that if its political strategy is not well developed, it may
fail to generate the concrete changes it seeks, PHM has developed a
comprehensive policy to cover the aspects above.
Because of that, government leaders and decision-makers will often be
opposed to many aspects of the PHM strategy on ideological grounds and
will resist PHM members’ advocacy. This does not deter PHM and its
members.
Success will ultimately depend on widening PHM’s network of alliances. PHM
will buy-in on the ongoing support from major global institutions; this is
seen as essential.
PHM will align its policy recommendations with the MDGs only as a tactical
step in an effort to redirect the MDG Movement from within. MDG proponents
will thus be PHM’s tactical, but not strategic allies. Without strong
political action on the processes that are to lead to the attainment of
the MDGs, PHM is clear the MDGs will not be attained.
In 2006, PHM aims at generating results and not just words. For that, PHM
aims at capturing the attention of political decision-makers to encourage
them and their colleagues to adopt the PHM agenda.
PHM will, therefore, define the opportunities and constraints for action
in each country where it is active and will identify which constituencies
may align themselves with the PHM agenda and which may offer resistance.
For this, it will: a) develop a typology of countries with respect to
their capacities for action along the People’s Charter for Health, and b)
classify countries by level of national resources allocated to health.
In conclusion, PHM will play its historical role, and that is above all
political --and mostly in the health sector. It will broker policy
dialogue with both its allies and opponents; in that effort, PHM will use
all appropriate modes of engagement.
Global Secretariat
August, 2006
We encourage you to share this document and the address of PHM’s website
www.phmovement.org , as well as its list-server at
[log in to unmask] with all the fellow travelers on the
(uphill) road for a better world.
---
PHA-Exchange is hosted on Kabissa - Space for change in Africa
To post, write to: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/pha-exchange
-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask]
SIGNOFF SDOH
DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.
To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname
To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.
For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]
To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST
To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html
|
