PHA-Exchange> Social determinants of Health Brasilia Meeting

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

REGIONAL MEETING OF CONSULTATION WITH CIVIL SOCIETY
ON SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
Brasilia, Brazil, April 12-14, 2007


LETTER OF BRASILIA


Mingaƒx to reduce health inequity in the Americas

We are a coalition of social and popular movements and organizations of women, 
rural people, peoples of the forest, indigenous peoples and nations, 
communities of African descent, Roma and other nomadic peoples, gender 
identity and sexual orientation (GLBT) groups, territorial neighborhood 
organizations, union movements of workers, academics, housing activists, 
health service users, patients¡¦ leagues, professional guilds, and NGOs of 
various parts of the Americas, from Canada to Chile, through Central America 
and the Caribbean, gathering in Brasilia for the regional meeting of 
consultation on social determinants of health, convened by the Governments of 
Brazil and Chile, civil society organizations of the Americas, the OAS, PAHO, 
and the WHO, to discuss the multiple health-related issues we face and the 
need and importance of recognizing social determinants of health in order to 
overcome them.

This meeting reaffirms profound dissatisfaction with the prevailing approach 
to social and economic development in the Americas, an approach that, in 
recent decades, has gained strength through a set of neoliberal policies 
associated with globalization, and that must be replaced.  Based on market 
logic, it privatizes and medicates health to the detriment of the right to 
health, heightens human rights violations and inequalities that lead to health 
inequity, weakens and impairs health and living conditions, and is entirely 
avoidable and unfair.

We also reaffirm that this development approach reduces the role of the state 
as a promoter of health, fragmenting and privatizing health systems, shrinking 
public health resources, emphasizing a curative approach to individual 
diseases.

The growth of this approach in the Americas heightens inequalities and social 
exclusion, as evidenced by the concentration of wealth, land, and income and 
the improper use of natural resources.  At the same time it heightens gender 
inequality and discrimination for reasons of ethnicity, race, religion, and 
sexual orientation and gender identity (GLBT), and increases all forms of 
violence in both rural and urban areas, both public and private places.

It is clear to the civil society movements and organizations present at the 
meeting that health is a universal human right, a duty of the state, which 
requires a set of factors like food safety and security; decent work and 
recognition of the value of childbearing; adequate income; land access, use, 
and tenancy; sustainable management of natural and renewable resources; decent 
housing in a healthy environment; democratic civic participation; universal 
access to education and health services that are timely, humanized, of 
quality, and culturally appropriate; inclusive government social policies; 
social relations that are neither sexist nor racist; and cultural and 
religious tolerance.  This means that health factors and the right to health 
are indivisible and interdependent.
It is clear that, in order to make progress in overcoming health inequities, 
it is essential to devise sustainable approaches to social and economic 
development that safeguard human, civil, political, economic, social, 
cultural, environmental, sexual, and reproductive rights; that government 
adopt an approach that guarantees those rights; to promote sovereignty and 
food security to eradicate hunger from the Hemisphere, promoting agrarian 
reform that ensures land access, use, and tenancy, makes possible sustainable 
agriculture, and preserves ownership of heritage seeds, in a context of rural 
family farming appropriate to the climatic diversity of the region; to have 
urban reform that promotes better distribution of urban land and the building 
of socially just and environmentally sustainable cities; to democratize human 
cultural capital through universal access to education; to bring about 
participatory democracy; and to develop government policies that are 
intersectoral, universal, integrated, equitable, and participatory.

Accordingly, we civil society organizations meeting in Brasilia believe it is 
advisable to promote a common agenda concerning determinants of health that 
strengthens and broadens activism, autonomy, and social mobilization¡Vat the 
national and hemispheric levels¡Vto orient government and public policies 
toward this integrated perspective on health factors.

Therefore, we call for a civil society alliance based on the ancestral 
principles and knowledge of indigenous peoples and traditional communities 
(Minga), to restore a social practice in which we all will feel invited and 
committed to contribute our experience so as to strengthen action to transform 
determinants of health and enforce demands for health-related rights. At the 
same time we call upon national governments and international organizations to 
respect the autonomy of social organizations ¡Vaccording to those same 
principles ¡V and to commit their initiative, action, and resources to this 
transformation.

As organizations present in multiple social sectors, we pledge to publicize 
this discussion among popular organizations and social movements in the 
Hemisphere, to broaden it to include their viewpoints and contributions, and 
to enlist their active participation in the debate and in realizing the shared 
agenda, building a hemispheric movement that will continue to grow.

We also call upon the region¡¦s governments and the international organizations 
to commit themselves to this process, which began with the establishment of 
the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, in 2005, and to move forward, 
together with civil society, in firming up policies and programs that will 
affect and transform those determinants.  The WHO, PAHO, and the OAS, along 
with the region¡¦s governments, must continue to support and broaden this 
process, facilitating broad and influential participation by the region¡¦s 
civil society organizations.


Brasilia, April 14, 2007


------------------------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through Netnam-HCMC ISP: http://www.hcmc.netnam.vn/