PHA-Exchange> PHA 2 media coverage- 1: Inter Press Service- STORY 1: People's Assembly Demands 'Health for All Now!'

[UNNIKRISHNAN P.V. (Dr)]

This story has been forwarded to you from http://ipsnews.net, the
world's
only global news service specialising in the issues you care about.
 
HEALTH:  People's Assembly Demands 'Health for All Now!'
 
Kintto Lucas
 
CUENCA, Ecuador, Jul 18 (IPS) - More than 1,200 people from 77
countries are taking part in the second People's Health 
Assembly, which is demanding "Health for All Now!" and discussing 
alternatives for making health care universally available.
 
The Jul. 17-23 gathering in this Ecuadorian city is pushing for
 recognition of health as a fundamental human right, while 
calling for a full stop to "corporate abuse of health."
 
 The scheduled activities include the international launch of
 the first Global Health Watch Report (GHW), dubbed the 
Alternative World Health Report, and the Global Children's Forum, 
in which 500 boys and girls will take part.
 
 According to the organisers, the Children's Forum, part of the
 Festival of Hope and Alegremia, "is a chance for children to 
discuss, analyse and defend issues crucial to their health, 
happiness and well-being. It is an opportunity to celebrate 
diversity and hope."
 
 "Medicine means illness. But life in community and the sense of
 belonging to a culture and to nature are health," said Dr. Julio 
Monsalvo, who will take part in several workshops in this week's 
Assembly.
 
 As one of the new ways of thinking about a healthy world,
 Monsalvo talked about "alegremia", a word that was coined to 
describe "a philosophy for being happy."
 
 The Assembly's web site describes alegremia as "the bubbling,
 fizzing joy in our blood, helping us leap over mountains of 
doubt and fear, dissolving pride and racing past petty 
disagreements."
 
 "Love, water, air, shelter, happiness and art make health and
 happiness possible," Monsalvo added.
 
 For the past 30 years, the Argentine medical doctor has lived
 with the Toba Indians, one of the 24 native ethnic groups in 
northern Argentina.
 
 He said the Tobas live in harmony with their environment, and
 that he has learned a great deal. He observed that "they do not 
hit their children, they think before they speak, they know how 
to listen, and each individual thinks and acts with the community 
in mind."
 
 "Health cannot exist in the absence of true life in community
 with other people and with nature," he argued.
 
 Monsalvo said the paradigm of thinking in the Western world is
 one of domination. "That vision has a series of consequences 
that in our days have become scandalous: the suicidal 
exploitation of nature...and the destruction of the values of 
native peoples."
 
 The preservation of these values is a starting point for
 resisting the deterioration of life and the "cultural 
homogenisation imposed from the centres of power," said Monsalvo.
 
 The Global Children's Forum has the aim of making children
 "literate" about the environment. The Forum will discuss, 
analyse and defend food sovereignty in each region, promoting the 
care, distribution and protection of water resources, raising 
awareness about air pollution, and encouraging solidarity and 
love.
 
 "We are promoting taking care of the air and water, and having
 a healthy diet, with the practice of art as a model for 
interactive education, while proclaiming love, solidarity and 
affection, and underlining that all of the world's children have 
a right to shelter," commented Luz Ordóñez, who is coordinating 
the Children's Forum.
 
 "The Forum is a week-long event with a series of activities in
 which play and art will provide the foundation for children to 
make their voices heard, through education and communication, 
defending the environment that we adults are destroying," she 
said.
 
 On Monday, teachers, children and other participants in the
 Children's Forum discussed contradictions in the world: air 
should be pure, but it is full of smog in the cities, and water 
is essential to life but millions of people around the world have 
no access to it.
 
 The young participants are also debating climate change and the
 need to protect the world's forests.
 
 On Tuesday, the focus will be on the millions of people living
 in extreme poverty, without a roof over their heads, child 
labour, and the effects of emigration and war on children.
 
 Children from the Colombian-Ecuadorian border region will also
 present drawings and share their personal experiences of the 
health effects of the aerial spraying of glyphosate on coca 
plantations, which also affects food crops and livestock.
 
 Food security and sovereignty as essential elements of a
 healthy life, threatened by the production of food using 
preservatives, toxic agrochemicals and transgenic crops will be 
discussed on Wednesday.
 
 The first People's Health Assembly, held last year in
 Bangladesh, was a success, drawing delegates from over 70 
countries and creating an international network for a healthy 
world.
 
 Dr. Arturo Quizhpe Peralta, coordinator of this year's People's
 Health Assembly, said participants this year were expected to 
continue the debates held last year in Bangladesh and consolidate 
the alliances for building a healthier world.
 
 Francisco Hidalgo with the Centre for Studies and Advising on
 Health in Ecuador said this week's gathering is also a way to 
generate new forums for discussing and giving shape to an 
alternative form of globalisation.
 
 The People's Health Assembly "in Cuenca is a meeting of
 representatives of popular sectors, alternative scientists, and 
associations working in favour of intercultural, humanistic 
medicine who are coming together in the search for a healthier 
world," he said.
 
 According to Hidalgo, the Assembly will be an immensely rich
 event due to the great diversity of the delegations and the 
broad scope of the debate, and because the state of health in the 
world today will be analysed from different angles: as a human 
rights issue and in relation to ecology, military disarmament, 
ancestral cultures and popular wisdom.
 
 "The launch of the Alternative World Health Report will be one
 of this week's main events, because it is the concrete result of 
this construction of perspectives based on a critical vision of 
the health of the majority in the world today," said Hidalgo.
 
 "The Assembly is part of a process that is seeking to
 counteract the effects of neoliberal policies that are aimed at 
accentuating the individualisation of health, as well as the 
waves of privatisation that further reduce access to public 
health services," he concluded. . (END/2005)
 
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20050801/57f90db4/attachment-0001.html>