PHA-Exchange> Action against privatization in Egypt

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

from Alaa Shukrallah <alaashuk at yahoo.com> -----

  I am sending a press release that I translated to English. Sorry that the 
english language is not very good as it was translated in a hurry. Please read 
below. The enclosed press conference was held on tuesday 12th of june. The 
document was also presented to the members of parliament during a picket which 
was held a few days earlier. We are in the process of translating many of the 
documents and a progress report on the campaign. So far it is going quit 
strongly and is being joined by new forces. Currently their is an alliance 
between more than 25 different political and Civil Society organisations that 
adopt the campaigne and are working together. committees are being organised 
in the different governorates in Egypt in defence of citizens right to health 
and against the privitization of the helath insurance organisation as part of 
the governments plan supported and pushed by the World Bank, USAID as well as 
European Union. We need your solidarity and support. Please tell think with us 
how you can help our campaign from your side, particularly how to pressure the 
World Bank and EU. 
  I will be reporting on the developments continiously.
  yours
  Alaa Shukrallah
  member of global secretariat
  

Committee for Defending the Citizens Right to Health (CDCRH)
(Against the privatization of health insurance)

Press Release 2
	CDCRH was founded last May by 21 civil society organizations as a 
reaction to the Prime Minister declaration no. 637 for the year 2007 that has 
founded the "Egyptian Holding Company for Health Care". The CDCRH hereby 
announces its position to the people and the press.
•	Our opposition to the prime minister decree as it replaces the heath 
insurance organization as a non-profit organization, and founded by a 
presidential declaration, by a profit oriented holding company.
•	Our opposition to depriving the insured people from the ownership of 
the hospitals and assets built by their subscription money through its 
transfer to the new holding company. The decree gives the government the right 
to sell these assets in the stock exchange.
•	Our opposition to the secrecy surrounding the preparation and issuing 
of this decree without prior declaration of the draft to be discussed by the 
beneficiaries and the civil society organization.
•	Our opposition to the secret preparation of the new law for health 
insurance and prohibiting the publication of the data about health insurance 
and the annual budgets. We also denounce preparing this law without consulting 
the national experts and the civil society organizations in spite of 
consulting different foreign agencies.
•	Our strong opposition to the inequity imposed on people by the new law 
through providing different packages of health insurance according to peoples 
means not needs, as well as the removal of some interventions from the 
currently insured person as the Minister of Health declared in his example of 
removing "kidney dialysis".
•	Our opposition to imposing on the insured persons to pay one third of 
the price of treatments (including surgeries, investigations and hospital 
accommodation) and prescriptions. This act will deprive the majority of people 
from many essential medical interventions, in addition, to the fact that it 
runs contradictory to the essential principle of health insurance of paying 
the premium in stead of being obliged to pay a good some of money when being 
sick. 
•	Our opposition to the policies which aim at making the private sector 
the major provider of health services rather than one of the providers. We 
firmly believe  that this policy will lead to placing the burden of profits of 
the private sector on the patients and increasing the burden costs of 
treatment on our people whom half of which lie below the poverty line.
•	Our opposition to forcing the inclusion of the private sector in the 
organization of the health insurance services "in place of the current 
practice in which seeking private is an optional alternative only". Such a 
policy will lead to increasing the cost and burden once again through placing 
the profit margin of these private insurance companies on the shoulders of the 
patients.
We firmly emphasis our principle stand that health is a right to every citizen 
and not a commodity from which profits should be made. We firmly believe that 
policies which lead to the latter constitute a danger to the stability of our 
society and its development.





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