PHA-Exchange> COFS, a new People's Charter for Health endorser

[Claudio]

From: Debra Budiani 

It is with great pleasure that I write to PHM electronic communication network after learning much about the Movement from the website as well as from communication with the Global Secretariat Office and meetings with Dr. Hani Serag in Cairo. 
I am writing to you as a representative of a new non-profit organization, the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions (COFS).  COFS has studied the People’s Health Charter and enthusiastically endorsed it, which makes us consider ourselves now a part of the PHM and eager to participate in various ways. 

COFS  is a pioneering international health and human rights organization committed to combating the trafficking of humans for organs and ending the exploitation of the poor as a source of organ and tissue supplies.  We provide outreach services to survivors and potential solicited donors as well as engage survivors, recipients, medical professionals, the state, laboratories, religious and other community leaders to seek solutions to this global issue.  In brief, COFS combines prevention, policy advocacy, and survivor support through a comprehensive approach to combat organ trafficking.   

Given PHM's commitment to struggle against health inequalities and the commodification of health care services, it is with great pleasure that I invite PHM's participation in COFS mission and work.  We are developing a strategic campaign along side our outreach services in various countries but starting most intensely in Egypt, where I have conducted research on this subject since 1999.  As a medical anthropologist, I started this work when I found that 100% of the 300+ asylum seekers I interviewed in Egypt shared a fear of organ theft from medical establishments in Egypt.  This, crossed with other emerging studies in recent years (i.e. Abouna, Scheper-Hughes, Zargooshi), demonstrates the extent to which transplant technologies have evoked fear in vulnerable and marginalized peoples of the world who come to be viewed as valuable for their parts.  

The Global Health Watch is one potential project that may be considered to include information about the global traffic in human organs.  I work extensively on donor-follow up and collecting rich ethnographic narratives of solicited organ donors/ survivors of the black market organ trade and would be happy to see those included in such a publication along with the quantitative data we are able to access.  Other forms of participation are also most welcome.  COFS wishes to expand to various countries where hot-spots exists in this trade and have thus far just begun to lay the seeds in China, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Thailand, etc.  PHM's presence in these countries may help us to facilitate further advocacy on this issue.

In addition, I would love to be a part of the geographical PHM circles in both the USA, and soon in Egypt as we are in the process of registering a branch of COFS in Cairo.  I was pleased to read Claudio’s mail about facilitating a PHM circles today.

Thank you kindly for your attention and I look forward to your responses and most of all to hopefully meeting you soon at upcoming PHM events.

Warm regards,

Debra A. Budiani, Ph.D.

Executive Director 
Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions (COFS)
www.cofs.org
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