PHA-Exch> Biggest health news stories of the year?

[Claudio Schuftan]

   <draphael at yorku.ca> wrote:

>
> Mr. Paul Taylor
> Health Editor
> Globe and Mail
> Toronto Ontario
>
> Dear Mr. Taylor;
>
> I read with interest your report today on the biggest health stories of the
> year in today's Globe and Mail.
>
>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/GAM.20081226.LDOSES26/TPStory/TPComment
>
> I think you missed it.  The main story is that you were -- again -- able to
> go another year reporting thousands of lines of drivel while neglecting any
> number of important and relevant health stories.
>
> I'll bring just one to your attention.
>
> "Inequities are killing people on grand scale, reports WHO's Commission"
>
> http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr29/en/index.html
>
> See below...
>
> For others I would suggest about 1200 articles that appeared in 2008 in
> Social Science and Medicine,  Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health,
> the British Medical Journal and the International Journal of Epidemiology,
>  all of which provided extensive documentation of how living conditions --
> not the claptrap you report with such cuteness in your columns -- are the
> primary determinants of Canadian's health.
>
> I expect better from Canada's National Newspaper.
>
> Happy  New  Year!
>
> Dennis Raphael, PhD
> Professor, School of Health Policy and Management
> York University
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Press release
>
> *Inequities are killing people on grand scale, reports WHO's Commission*
>
> 28 August 2008 | GENEVA -- A child born in a Glasgow, Scotland suburb can
> expect a life 28 years shorter than another living only 13 kilometres away.
> A girl in Lesotho is likely to live 42 years less than another in Japan. In
> Sweden, the risk of a woman dying during pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 17
> 400; in Afghanistan, the odds are 1 in 8. Biology does not explain any of
> this. Instead, the differences between - and within - countries result from
> the social environment where people are born, live, grow, work and age.
>
> These "social determinants of health" have been the focus of a three-year
> investigation by an eminent group of policy makers, academics, former heads
> of state and former ministers of health. Together, they comprise the World
> Health Organization's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.
> Today, the Commission presents its findings to the WHO Director-General Dr
> Margaret Chan.
>
> "(The) toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in
> large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the
> world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the
> Commissioners write in *Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity
> through Action on the Social Determinants of Health.* "Social injustice is
> killing people on a grand scale."
>
> "Health inequity really is a matter of life and death," said Dr Chan today
> while welcoming the Report and congratulating the Commission. "But health
> systems will not *naturally* gravitate towards equity. Unprecedented
> leadership is needed that compels all actors, including those beyond the
> health sector, to examine their impact on health. Primary health care, which
> integrates health in all of government's policies, is the best framework for
> doing so."
>
> Sir Michael Marmot, Commission Chair said: "Central to the Commission's
> recommendations is creating the conditions for people to be empowered, to
> have freedom to lead flourishing lives. Nowhere is lack of empowerment more
> obvious than in the plight of women in many parts of the world. Health
> suffers as a result. Following our recommendations would dramatically
> improve the health and life chances of billions of people." .... THIS WAS
> POSTED EARLIER IN PHA-EXCH
>
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