PHA-Exchange> US Poor at World Health Organization

[SAULELYDIS at aol.com]

Geneva, Switzerland: December 8, 2003

Movement of the Poor in the United States Pleads for World Intervention in 
the Health Care Disaster in the USA

During the week of International Human Rights Day, on December 8, 2003, the 
KWRU carried an urgent cry to the World Health Organization (WHO) from the 
people of the United States who are suffering and dying from being denied the 
basic human right to health care. 

Forty-four million Americans are without health care on an ongoing basis, and 
eighty-five million have been without health care at some point in the last 
four years. By official estimates, 18,000 people die every year from not having 
access to health care in the United States, and every day, people across the 
country, and especially older people, are forced to buy life-sustaining 
medications in countries such as Canada and Mexico, because they cannot afford US 
prices. And because it is not profitable for companies to make vaccinations in a 
for-profit health care system, people in the United States and worldwide go 
without basic vaccinations. Hospitals close every day in poor neighborhoods 
across the United States, because they are not "profitable." (Since the KWRU 
members' return from Geneva, it has been announced that Philadelphia will soon 
lose a key hospital and trauma center for this reason.)

In Geneva, at the world headquarters of the WHO, we met with representatives 
of the World Health Organization who received us to hear our testimonies about 
the deadly health care crisis in the United States. They told us we were the 
first grassroots group they have met with from the United States. 

Carolyn Caesar, a currently homeless mother and new leader in the KWRU told 
her story and talked about the effects that being homeless and without health 
care has had on her family's lives and health. She shared a book in which she 
has documented her personal history as a homeless child and later a homeless 
mother, and also as a leader fighting for economic human rights. She is 
currently living in a "takeover" house of the KWRU.

Cheri Honkala spoke of her experience of being without health care and of 
almost dying just a couple months ago from an infection caused by lack of dental 
care. She also spoke of being denied basic vaccinations for her 16-month old 
son, because neither he nor she have medical insurance. "I am just one of 
millions of people in this situation in our rich country," she repeated several 
times. 

She spoke of the thousands who die every year because they cannot afford 
health care in the United States, even though our country has some of the best 
hospitals in the world. Cheri also spoke of the devastating effects of 
homelessness, squalid housing conditions, malnutrition, lack of access to water and heat 
on the health of millions of families in the United States.

The delegation from the Kensington Welfare Rights Union went on to inform the 
representatives of the World Health Organization of the plans of the KWRU and 
the labor movement for a campaign for national health care this coming year. 
This campaign will bring together the movement of the poor and unemployed with 
the labor movement to build a unified, mass movement to force the United 
States to deal with the health care crisis like the national emergency that it is.

We appealed to the World Health Organization and the international community 
to intervene in the health disaster in the US by helping to raise the world's 
awarenesss of this crisis. We also asked for humanitarian relief such as 
doctors who could provide life saving medical care to people who live under threat 
of death every day from being denied this basic necessity in the richest 
country in the world.

For further information about KWRU's upcoming plans for a campaign for 
National Health Care, write kwru at kwru.org and/ or keep informed through www.kwru.org.