PHA-Exchange> PHA 2 media coverage: Inter Press Service- STORY 2: " Sick of Globalisation"

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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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