PHA-Exchange> Global Health Watch

[Patricia Morton]

Dear Friends 

Medact, together with the People’s Health Movement and GEGA, is planning the publication of the Global Health Watch, a report providing a civil society view on the state of the world’s health (see accompanying flyer, below).

In preparation for this report, Medact is calling for testimonies from civil society on the different issues covered by the report. We will launch this call in several waves: firstly, we are looking for testimonies on the effects of the marketization of:

1. Health care provision in the developing world. Issues we are particularly interested in are: 
 the effects of privatisation and commercialisation on access to health care and the quality of health care. For example, has privatisation led health providers to see health care as a business rather than a public service? Has it resulted in an increase in user fees? Have profit-motives led to an increase in unethical practices such as using cheaper drugs that do not work? 
 ways in which advocacy has improved access to health services (such as report cards for public services; participatory budgeting; and health consumer protection groups).

2. Water, sanitation and electricity services.
 What is the effect of privatisation on access to these services?  How does reduced access to water, for example, affect the poor? What is the effect on cost and quality of these services?

The testimonies will feed into and support arguments put forward in the publication. They will also be organised thematically and geographically and available for public access on the web. Testimonies should be no more than 800 words in length.

We hope that the Global Health Watch will form a mechanism to express and amplify civil society’s concerns about the increase in marketisation and commercialisation of key public services and goods. Join us in this venture by helping us collate the testimonies of the poor. Please e-mail Patricia Morton at patriciamorton at medact.org

With many thanks


Patricia Morton
For the Global Health Watch team


Global Health Watch

Global civil society has not adequately participated in international health advocacy. Although high-profile success has been achieved with some campaigns, most notably around access to medicines and breastfeeding and certain diseases, there has been a striking lack of involvement and pressure from health campaigners on broader public health and health systems issues. In addition, disparities in health between the rich and the poor have grown at alarming rates both within and between countries, leaving society and the public health movement with a large humanitarian and moral challenge. 

The increasingly global dimensions of poverty, disease and health policy require a much more vigorous input from public health experts, civil society and non-government organisations. The People’s Health Movement, the Global Equity Gauge Alliance and Medact therefore propose to mobilise a fragmented global health community through the publication of an annual Global Health Watch. This publication will be used to shift the health policy agenda away from a technocratic approach to delivering health, to one that recognises the important political, social and economic barriers which prevent the achievement of better health. 

We want the Watch to strengthen the calls for a broad approach to health amongst policy-makers, health professionals, campaigners, researchers and others concerned with health and to act as a reality-check on those formulating health policy by providing a forum which magnifies the voice of the poor and vulnerable and those who work with them. 

The Watch will consist of a compilation of chapters on various global health issues written by NGOs and academics. Stories, experiences and analysis direct from poor communities will be threaded through the chapters and enable those who are traditionally unheard to voice their concerns on global health issues:

The Global Health Watch team is now looking both for authors to write chapters and for stories and experiences from around the world. For more information on the areas we are covering, go the Medact website www.medact.org



Medact 
The Grayston Centre
28 Charles Square 
London N1 6HT 
United Kingdom 
Tel: +44 20 7324 4733
Fax: +44 20 7324 4734
www.medact.org										
October, 2003