PHA-Exchange> Globla Health Watch Update: Newsletter 5, October 2004

[Global Health Watch]

Global Health Watch: Mobilising Civil Society around an Alternative World
Health Report

GHW Update 5 - October 2004
Welcome to our fifth edition!!!

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Plans for Peoples' Health Assembly II well underway
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The People's Health Assembly 2, to be held in Cuenca, Ecuador in July 2005,
promises to be an event as significant as the G8 meeting it follows!

Events planned include the launch of the Global Health Watch, and a large
programme covering the challenges, gaps and potential links to be made in
global health today. PHA2 will also feature a youth conference, photo
exhibitions, events for children, an indigenous healing ceremony, an
anti-war march and many other cultural events. 1000 participants are
expected, including a large delegation from Africa, delegations of
indigenous people from around the world, youth and children as well as a
range of high-profile speakers.

One of the members of the GHW secretariat, Pat Morton, attended the first
meeting of the international organising committee in Cuenca last week. It
was agreed that the GHW chapters would be used as position papers at the
Assembly.

For more information about the conference visit www.phmovement.org/pha-II/


GHW at first `MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY' meeting in Johannesburg
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MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY is a broad coalition of aid agencies, trade unions and
campaigning groups and individuals who are coming together to demand the UK
Government and world leaders to make 2005 pivotal year to change the rules
and practices of trade, cancel poor countries' debt and deliver more and
better aid.

Antoinette Ntuli represented the GHW at the first MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY
international meeting held in Johannesburg on September 20-21, 2004. This
meeting brought together people from throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, North
and Latin America and pooled ideas and energy to start shaping this global
campaign that aims to bring together millions of people all over the world.

For more information on the campaign visit www.makepovertyhistory.org


NEWS ON THE GHW REPORT 2005 - A taste of Globalisation and Health
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"The current path of globalisation must change.  Too few share in its
benefits. Too many have no voice in its design and no influence in its
course."

We are pleased to share with you some extracts from the chapter "The
politics and economics of health in the era of globalisation" by Ron
Labonte, Ted Shrecker (Saskatchewan Univ. Canada) and Amit Sengupta
(Peoples' Health Movement).

The central argument of this chapter is that specific aspects of
globalisation increasingly limit the ability of many governments to
redistribute wealth, finance public goods and services or regulate
market-based enterprises - all being important health-promoting
policies.

One of the biggest governance challenges is the asymmetry between
enforceable economic market-based rules (i.e. WTO and other regional or
bilateral trade agreements) and unenforceable social and environmental
obligations (i.e. human rights treaties), by which countries have largely
failed to abide.

Case studies from China, Zambia, northern Mexico and Canada are used to
illustrate the complex interactions between globalisation and health in low,
middle and high income countries. Here is a taste of some of the contents of
the Chinese case.

. China is increasingly cited as a model for what global market integration
can do for a developing country. It has experienced
phenomenal economic growth since introducing market reforms in the late
1970s and now produces much of the world's factory-manufactured goods.
. Export processing zones (EPZs) have mushroomed in China in the past two
decades and China holds 6th place in the world in terms of foreign
investment. This is for the single reason that it is more profitable to
produce goods in the world's largest supplier of cheap labour than it is
anywhere else.
. Cheap labour in China comes to a price: open disregard of workers' rights.
Hours of work and wages are effectively unregulated; many in the EPZs work
twelve to eighteen hour days, seven days a week, for months at a time. By
one estimate, approximately 1 in every 250 EPZ workers was killed in an
industrial accident in 2003.
. On the other hand, China's market reforms led to the collapse of its once
vanguard systems of public and community-based health insurance. The
government share of health expenditures fell by over 50 per cent between
1980 and 1998, almost trebling the portion paid by families.
. The result was a surge in the number of people who fell into poverty by
exhausting their income and savings to pay for medical
treatment- 27 million rural Chinese in 1998 - and a dramatic slowdown in
China's population health improvements, particularly
infant mortality and life expectancy.

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