PHM-Exch> Fwd: PHM USA Update

[Claudio Schuftan]

.From: Laura Turiano phm at turiano.org
.



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*Save the Date: Doctors for Global Health General Assembly*
Atlanta, GA, August 6-8
We are considering having a PHM meeting on the day before or after the DGH
Assembly. If you would come to such an event, or would like to help organize
it, please let us know at phm at hesperian.org.
*
Health and Human Rights Learning Circle
*SF Bay area PHM is among the organizers of a Health and Human Rights
Learning Circle. The series of four learning sessions and an interactive
website are the first steps in an effort to:
·     Build community among health workers, healers, allies, activists,
organizers
·     Learn about, understand, and be able to communicate the HHR framework
·     Consider how to use a HHR framework to build an effective,
cross-sectoral, cross-issue Bay Area movement for health and social justice.

Anyone can participate in the Learning Circle by signing up on the website:
http://hhrlearningcircle.wetpaint.com/.<http://hhrlearningcircle.wetpaint.com/>

*Novartis Suit in India Threatens Access to Essential Medicine Worldwide
*In December, PHM-USA and Hesperian Foundation hosted Dr. Gopal Dabade, from
PHM India and the Drug Action Forum, who spoke in Berkeley about the
campaign against the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis.

Novartis approached the Supreme Court of India on September 12, 2009 to
appeal its case against the government for not granting a patent on a
version of Gleevec, a leukemia drug. The case was previously turned down by
the Chennai High Court and Intellectual Property Appellate Board. Novartis
is challenging section 3d of the Indian patent code, which prohibits
granting patents on substances that don’t show improved efficacy or employ a
new reactant.  If Novartis wins this case, it will drastically impact access
to essential medicines not only in India, but around the world.

PHM-USA plans to draft and circulate a letter of support that will be sent
to Novartis and used in the campaign in India, in solidarity with the work
of Dr. Gopal Dabade and others.  You can read more about the visit, and the
history of the Novartis case on PHM website or Hesperian's weblog:
http://hesperian.typepad.com/weblog/2009/12/health-activist-dr-gopal-dabade-recently-came-to-berkeley-to-speak-on-the-ongoing-struggle-against-swiss-pharmaceutical-comp.html

To get involved with this effort or sign on to the letter contact
lily at hesperian.org

*A New Coalition to Influence Obama’s Global Health Initiative
*In the coming year a series of new initiatives could dramatically
strengthen US global health programs.* *The Obama administration’s
announcement in May 2009 of a Global Health Initiative, efforts by the US
Congress to reform foreign assistance and potentially re-write the foreign
assistance act, and international efforts to expand global health
initiatives and better coordinate global health aid all portend change.

In the US, a coalition of global health advocacy organizations has come
together to present a progressive vision of what the next phase of US global
health support could look like, including:
·     Ambitious scale up of US assistance for health that saves even more
lives through new, innovative programming.
·     New resources—with the US contributing its fair share to
efforts—rather than taking from one area of promised support and giving to
another.
·     The US to lead the world to reach the health MDGs and do so in ways
which build access to comprehensive primary healthcare and provide a
rights-based approach to health for all people.
·     Reform of US foreign assistance to ensure it is outcomes-driven, based
on results for those most in need, and ambitiously aimed toward universal
access.

The coalition report, *THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL HEALTH: Ingredients for a Bold &
Effective U.S. Initiative,* and more information are available at:
http://www.theglobalhealthinitiative.org

*PHM US in Haiti

*In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, Evan Lyon, PHM member and
physician with Partners in Health, emerged as one of the most clear and
honest voices explaining the situation in Port-au-Prince, appearing on
various news media. You can read and hear his accounts here:
http://www.hhropenforum.org/tag/evan-lyon/
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/haitiearthquake/2010/02/20102272125725938.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEJafhh7GJg .

In addition to Partners in Health (http://standwithhaiti.org), whose long
term presence in Haiti has made them one of the principal international
organizations responding to the earthquake, PHM US Coordination Group member
Monica Dyer has also been in Haiti since shortly after the quake. She writes
that she helped form a coalition of local and international NGOs, and
peasant organizations that have worked on the community level to respond to
the crisis. They have animators (community organizers) working in camps
across the city, coordinating assessments and distributions to meet
immediate needs including mobile clinics, shelter, water, sanitation, food,
hygiene, trash management, security, and dignity.* *
“We're doing what we can to bring in Haitian experts into the UN
sector-based cluster meetings and include civil society in the process.
Haitians are essentially not allowed onto the UN base where the entire
recovery strategy (read national strategy that is set to benefit all the
wrong interests, continuation of the same exploitation of the Haitian
people) is being determined.  I could go on and on about the violation of
human rights going on: the withholding of tents so that people can
eventually be coerced into large camps where they will be easier to
‘manage’, meanwhile, destroying communities and making people completely
dependent on the system”.
For more updates, photos, and to contribute, see*
http://www.haitiresponsecoalition.org/
*
Highland Emergency International (HEI), an international medical and
humanitarian relief team based out of Oakland California’s Highland General
Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine, is sending residents and nurses
to Haiti in an ongoing manner through International Medical Corps (IMC), in
an effort to establish a long term, sustainable presence in Haiti, aiding in
disaster relief, basic medical care, and humanitarian support. This group at
Highland was established through the efforts of several PHM members
affiliated with Doctors for Global Health (www.dghonline.org) More
information at:
*http://hghed.com/files/Haiti_Letter.pdf
http://hghed.com/program_information/category/international_em
*
Jennifer Kasper from DGH writes about her experience in Haiti here:
http://www.dghonline.org/news/jennifer-kaspers-reflections-her-experience-volunteering-haiti.“During
my time there, we planned a needs assessment to document the amount
of damage suffered by all of the HIV clinics throughout the city, note which
ones lost staff and ARVs and other supplies. We discussed how to organize
all of the HIV associations so that they could advocate as one voice for
equitable treatment for all… The breath of life of the Haitian people is so
palpable. It is strong enough to dispel the stench of death. It was very
peaceful in Port-au-Prince. The Haitian people with whom I came in contact
were warm, generous, and vibrant, with a desire to help those in need.
People were carrying on, doing the best they could to restore a sense of
dignity and normalcy to their lives.”

Hesperian Foundation (http://www.hesperian.org/)  reports that, since the
earthquake, there have over 30,000 downloads from its website of health
education publications in Kreyol. They also collaborated with MEDICC (
http://www.medicc.org/ns/)  to expand their Spanish–French– Kreyol medical
glossary to include English. These resources and more are now available on a
Haitian Kreyòl Health Resources site:
http://creole.hesperian.net/.<http://creole.hesperian.net/>You can
access the
*Health for All Medical Glossary* directly here:
http://creole.hesperian.net/Glossary
*
**New publications and media of interest

*Matt Anderson and colleagues from Montefiore Medical Center recently
published *The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Outpatients in the Bronx: A
Card Study (
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_health_care_for_the_poor_and_underserved/v020/20.4.shah.html)
*in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. The
investigation showed that nearly 1/4 of the patients seen in their Bronx
clinics had been arrested and that half had either been incarcerated or had
a family member incarcerated. This study is part of an effort that included
the formation of a Transitions Clinic for ex-prisoners last summer. If you
are interested in a reprint, please write mattanderson (at)*
bronxdoc at gmail.com*.

ALAMES, the Latin American Social Medicine Association held their 25th
anniversary conference in Bogota in November of 2009.  Some of the documents
and reports from this Congress are available in English and Spanish in the
December issue of the online journal Social Medicine (
http://www.socialmedicine.info). The Spanish version of the journal can be
found at http://www.medicinasocial.info. More materials from the Congress
will be published in the coming year.

Social Medicine is also initiating a series entitled *Rebuilding the US
Health Left* that will be space for debate on this topic. Please look for
the first article in this series in March.

*The Deadly Ideas of Neoliberalism: How the IMF has Undermined Public Health
and the Fight Against AIDS
*This book, by Rick Rowden, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid International
USA., explores the relationship between the spread of HIV/AIDS (among other
diseases of poverty) and neoliberal economic ideas. It explains not only how
IMF policies have exacerbated public health problems in developing
countries, but also how mounting global frustration will ultimately lead to
challenges to the dominant neoliberal ideas, as other more effective
economic ideas are sought. In stark, powerful terms, Rowden offers a unique
and in-depth critique of development economics, global foreign aid and
health institutions, and how these seemingly abstract factors play out in
the real world -- from the highest levels of global institutions to African
finance and health ministries to rural health outposts of developing
nations, and back again.

*The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger*, by
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
It is well established that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives
and suffer more from almost every social problem. Now a groundbreaking book,
based on thirty years’ research, takes an important step past this idea. *The
Spirit Level *shows that there is one common factor that links the
healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their
members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of
government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone
within them—the well-off as well as the poor.
The remarkable data assembled in T*he Spirit Level r*eveals striking
differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within
America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem—ill-health,
violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more
likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most
measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average
lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its
citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

*
The South Los Angeles Declaration of Health and Human Rights

*On June 5th 2009, the First Annual South Los Angeles Health and Human
Rights Conference was convened to help all of us learn how to apply a
rights-based approach to improve health and well-being…. We learned that a
health and human rights approach means different things to different people
but that, at its core, a health and human rights approach is based on key
principles…. Following the conference, residents and workers in South Los
Angeles came together in workgroups focused on a specific dimensions of
human rights in south Los Angeles that impact health, such as education,
employment, housing, food security, etc. To date, this process has convened
over 1000 residents and workers in south Los Angeles to work together and
reach two significant goals:

·     The South LA Declaration of Health and Human Rights: unveiled on
December 10th, 2009, International Human Rights Day
·     The South LA Health and Human Rights Strategic Action Plan: After
December 10th, the community will develop a targeted strategic plan to
implement and advocate for recommendations from the workgroup process.

Whereas,
The residents of South Los Angeles have endured a long history of struggle
for social justice and are part of the global struggle for human rights that
has resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other
documents affirming that everyone has civil, political, economic, social and
cultural rights, and that these rights are inextricably linked … read more
at http://www.southlahealthandhumanrights.org/declaration.html

*Universal Periodic Review of the United States

*The U.N.’s first Universal Periodic Review of the U.S., scheduled to take
place December 2010, offers an important opportunity both to measure how the
U.S. is meeting its human rights obligations and to continue pressuring the
government to live up to those obligations. Every four years, the UPR
assesses each country's adherence to its human rights obligations under the
U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), human rights
treaties ratified by the country, its voluntary commitments, and applicable
international law. Reviews are conducted by the UPR Working Group, which
consists of 47 members of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

During the review, in addition to the “national report” provided by the
country under review and the reports of U.N. bodies, the Working Group
considers reports from other “stakeholders” such as civil society,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and national human rights
institutions. The US Human Rights Network (
http://www.ushrnetwork.org/campaign_upr) is coordinating civil society group
reports. PHM has been participating in the group working on a report of US
compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
as it relates to health, and with the report on the rights of disabled
people.

The government being reviewed is required to conduct a participatory process
to develop its report. The Administration’s onsite consultations are
underway.  A successful UPR consultation was just completed in New Orleans,
where 14 federal government representatives spent a full day listening to
the human rights concerns of people on the Gulf Coast.

.*The PHM USA website is **http://www.phmovement.org/en/circles/180/page*.
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