PHA-Exchange> In preparation of PHA II - part 3

[Claudio]

The People's Charter for Health

As a result of a full year's mobilization and five days of very intense and interactive work in Savar, a Global Peoples Health Charter emerged which was endorsed by all  participants (People's Health Assembly 2000a).   This Charter has now become:  

a     an expression of  the Movement's  common concerns;  

a     a vision for a better and healthier world; 

a     a call for more radical action; 

a     a tool for advocacy for people's health; and 

a     a worldwide rallying manifesto for global health movements, as well as for networking and coalition building.

The significance of this Global People's Charter is multiple:  

a     it endorses health as a social, economic and political issue and as a fundamental Human Right;  

a     it identifies inequality, poverty, exploitation, violence and injustice as the roots of preventable ill-health;

a     it underlines the imperative that 'Health for All' means challenging powerful economic interests, opposing globalization as the current iniquitous development model; it thus drastically changes our political and economic priorities; 

a     it brings in a new perspective and the voices from the poor and the marginalized (the rarely heard) encouraging people to develop their own local solutions; and 

a     it encourages people to hold accountable their own local authorities, national governments, international organizations and national and transnational corporations. 

The vision and the principles of the Charter, more than any other document preceding it, extricates health from the myopic biomedical-techno-managerialist approach it has seen in the last two decades --with its vertical, selective magic-bullets-approach to health-- and centers it squarely in the more comprehensive context of today's global socioeconomic-political-cultural-environmental realities. However, the most significant gain of the People's Health Assembly and the Charter is that --for the first time since Alma Ata--  a 'Health For All' action-plan unambiguously endorses a call for action that tackles the broader determinants of health.  These include: 

-Health as human right; 

-Economic challenges for health; 

-Social and political challenges in health; 

-Environmental challenges for health; 

-Tackling war, violence, conflict and natural disasters; 

-Fostering a people-centered health sector; and 

       -Encouraging people's participation for a healthier world.
 
contd.

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