PHA-Exchange> IPS on PHA II

[Wim De Ceukelaire]

HEALTH:
Sick of Globalisation 

Kintto Lucas 

CUENCA, Ecuador, Jul 21 (IPS) - Alternative reports on global health,
presented at the second People's Health Assembly in Ecuador this week,
question the free-market, neoliberal economic model and view it as the
cause of many of the health problems facing humanity today.

These include the indiscriminate use of toxic products in agriculture,
pollution caused by the oil industry, the consumption of transgenic
crops, the destruction of the urban environment by pollution, and the
commercialisation of health services. 

The reports by the Global Health Watch and the Observatorio
Latinoamericano de Salud see a healthy life as a fundamental human
right, the enjoyment of which depends on economic, political and social
factors. 

The Global Health Watch is a broad collaboration of public health
experts, non-governmental organisations, civil society activists,
community groups, health workers and academics. 

Mexican academic Laura Juárez Sánchez, who took part in drawing up the
reports, said that by generating increasing unemployment, poverty and
rural migration, the ”capitalist economic model” is the main cause of
the return of illnesses that had been basically eradicated and of deaths
from easily curable ailments. 

Juárez Sánchez pointed to the reappearance of cholera and deaths of
people from scabies, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, tonsillitis and
pneumonia. 

These illnesses are expanding as a result of ”malnutrition and the lack
of access to and deterioration of basic social services like health
care, education and housing,” said Juárez Sánchez, a researcher at the
Universidad Obrera, a Mexican university. 

”Rural and urban families are forced to live in overcrowded conditions
without piped water or plumbing, to share collective bathrooms, and to
live under roofs of corrugated iron or cardboard,” she said. 

Alex Zapata, who wrote the chapter of the Global Health Watch report -
also known as the Alternative World Health Report - that deals with the
”mercantilisation” of water, said ”capitalist globalisation” has led to
the privatisation of sewage and water services. 

That means water is becoming a marketable commodity or merchandise to
which only those who can afford it have access, which will have a
negative impact on the public health of a large part of the global
population, he said. 

The reports were presented Wednesday at the Jul. 17-23 second People's
Health Assembly in the city of Cuenca in southern Ecuador. 

Biologist Elizabeth Bravo of Ecuador, who provided information on the
effects of transgenic food crops, said the introduction of genetically
modified seeds is giving certain transnational corporations control over
food production worldwide, ”as is already occurring in the case of soy
beans.” 

”The global market for transgenic soy is the monopoly of a single
company, the U.S.-based Monsanto, which sells seeds that are resistant
to its Roundup herbicide,” she said. 

”The (Roundup Ready) seeds are not more productive,” said Bravo. ”The
only thing they do is make farmers dependent on a weed control model
based on intensive use of an herbicide.” 

According to the biologist, the expansion of transgenic crops, besides
creating dependency, promotes monoculture farming with the subsequent
decline of essential food crops and the loss of diversity and food
sovereignty. 

Bravo also said the effects of transgenic crops are extremely negative
for the poor rural population, which in turn has repercussions on public
health. 

”The expansion of soy in Argentina has displaced other crops like rice,
corn, sunflowers and wheat, and has pushed other farming activities into
marginal areas. Since 1988, the number of farms has shrunk by 24.5
percent, with the disappearance of 103,400 family farms. 

”Thousands and thousands of families migrate from the countryside to
urban slums every year,” said the biologist. 

Bravo admitted that more research is needed into the health effects on
humans of transgenic foods, but stressed that studies have found
negative consequences for animals living near fields where genetically
modified crops are grown. 

The alternative health reports also point to the violence plaguing
different regions and threatening the local populations, mentioning
Colombia, in the grip of a four-decade armed conflict, and the U.S.-led
war on Iraq, launched in March 2003. 

Physicians taking part in the People's Health Assembly noted that the
thousands of Iraqi civilians who have fallen victim to the violence over
the past two years included many health professionals. 

”In 2004 alone 71 medical professors have been killed or have been
intimidated to leave the country. There is complete insecurity in Iraqi
hospitals that has resulted in many casualties,” said Dr. Salam Ismael,
secretary-general of the organisation Doctors for Iraq. 

Ismael urged the more than 1,500 delegates from over 70 countries who
are taking part in this week's Assembly to demand support from the World
Health Organisation (WHO) to put an end to the violence and killing in
his country. 

He also proposed the creation of an international commission to
investigate war crimes and bring to light the horrors that his people
are suffering. 

Hospitals in Iraq are raided and wounded suspects are arrested without
the least respect for their human rights and the Geneva Convention, said
the Iraqi doctor. 

What is happening in Iraq is ”a war crime of the first order,” said Dr.
Bert De Belder, coordinator of Medical Aid for the Third World (MATW), a
health solidarity agency of the Belgium-based International Action for
Liberation (Intal). 

Professor Qasem Chowdhury of Bangladesh praised the alternative reports
and underlined the connections between health movements from all
continents that made the second annual People's Health Assembly
possible. 

Argentine Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the Pan American Health
Organisation, said the right to a healthy life should be linked to
recognition of cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity. 

This recognition, besides taking into account universal access to health
care and social participation, must also take into consideration
traditional medicine, traditional healers and collective intellectual
property, she said. 

The origins of this week's gathering date back to 1978, during the WHO
annual assembly, when 134 governments, in response to pressure by social
movements, signed the Declaration of Alma Ata in Kazakhstan (former
Soviet Union), committing themselves to achieving an acceptable level of
health for all people of the world by the year 2000. 

The initial enthusiasm on the part of governments gradually waned,
prompting civil society organisations, minorities, indigenous peoples
and other groups involved in health questions to take up the banner of
”health for all”. 

The first People's Health Assembly, held in Savar, Bangladesh in
December 2000 under the theme ”To Hear the Unheard”, drew more than
1,500 participants from 75 countries. 

One of the achievements of the meeting in Bangladesh was the approval of
the People's Health Declaration, based on a vision of a better and
healthier world - a starting point for a global health movement, said
Dr. Jaime Breilh with the Health Research and Advisory Centre, one of
the groups that organised the Assembly. (END/2005)
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