PHM-Exch> World TB Day and Dr Binayak Sen

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Manan Ganguli <manan.ganguli at smallsimple.co.uk>


> *I am writing on behalf the 'International Solidarity with Dr Binayak Sen*:
> a network of health workers worldwide'. Ravi (Narayan) is actively involved
> with this initiative and has suggested to contact you.
>
> We are a group of doctors, nurses, medical students, researchers and health
> workers from around the world who share the global distress about the
> presecution of Dr Binayak Sen.
>
> On the occasion of the World TB Day we circulated a letter widely for
> endorsement purposes (see below) and have sent the letter on 4
> April to WHO/Stop TB Secretariat and WHO-SEARO . The response has been very
> good indeed; in a short spate of time, we have 178 individual signatories
> from 21 countries and 14 organisations like Doctors for Human Rights-UK
> endorsing the letter.
>
> We are now circulating the letter to mainstream media and to medical/health
> journals, hence this mail. I would be grateful if you consider publishing
> the letter (or the content of it) in  any other medium to help spread the
> message.
>
> If you would like to have further information, please do not hesitate to
> contact me.
>
> Dr Manan Ganguli
>

To

Dr Margaret Chan

Director General, WHO



Dr Lucica Ditiu

Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership

WHO





24 March 2011





Dear Dr Margaret Chan and Dr Lucia Ditiu,



*Re. World TB Day and Dr Binayak Sen*



We are at the halfway point of the Global Plan to Stop TB and are launching
the World TB Day 2010-2011 and this year’s campaign focuses on individuals
around the world who have found new ways to stop TB and can serve as an
inspiration to others. With this focus in mind we call your attention to the
continuing imprisonment of Dr Binayak Sen, the first Indian recipient of the
2008 Jonathan Mann award for Global Health and Human Rights. We hope that
you will take the time to consider Dr Sen’s lifelong good work and
commitment in the field of health, in particular his effort to control
tuberculosis in marginalised communities, and wish to draw your attention to
his continued unfair and vengeful incarceration by the state of Chattisgarh,
India. He has also fought actively for the state to examine and redress the
social determinants of poor health and huge burden of malnutrition that
contributes to and co exists with the significant burden of TB amongst the
marginalised tribal communities.



We are a group of doctors, nurses, medical students, researchers and health
workers from around the world, who share the global distress about the
persecution of Dr Binayak Sen in India since 2007 and call for his immediate
release so that he can carry out his work promoting access to basic rights
and equity in addressing health in general, and tuberculosis in particular.



Dr Binayak Sen is a paediatrician and public health specialist who has
dedicated himself to the welfare of the poorest and most disadvantaged
members of society, and since 1978, well before DOTS was introduced in
India, has been working in the field of tuberculosis. In 1978, leaving his
academic career at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Dr Sen joined a Quaker-supported
rural tuberculosis center in Central India. It was here Dr Sen practised
innovative and needs-based approaches to control tuberculosis by convincing
the authorities to be flexible in providing anti-tubercular drugs to
communities who would otherwise discontinue their treatment for specific and
understandable reasons e.g. difficulties to access health facilities during
monsoon. We believe his approach was similar to community DOTS that has been
adopted at a much later stage.



Subsequently, during 1982-87, Dr Binayak Sen established a DOTS centre at a
hospital run by mine workers in Chhattisgarh state which he helped set up
and initiated tuberculosis promotion involving the mining communities
themselves in awareness activities. Later, in 1994, founding a
non-governmental organisation, Dr Sen focused on poverty and malnutrition in
the control of tuberculosis and spoke about it in various forums,
governmental and non-governmental.  In a recent writing (
http://www.asianmedia.org/events/ACJ%20CONVOCATION.asp) he expressed his
concern about the growing trend of drug resistant forms of the disease in
India and emphasised the need for systematic WHO studies to explore the
relationship between tuberculosis and BMI in the country.



Dr Chan and Dr. Ditiu, it is in this context we would like to bring to your
attention that Dr Binayak Sen’s incarceration is a huge tragedy and loss to
the field of public health. At the local level we fear that the loss of this
champion and also the services he provided and have not been replaced will
contribute to an increased risk of further spreading of tuberculosis. Dr Sen
has and would have continued to contribute tremendously through public
health policy formulation and advocacy at the state level and the education
and training of health activists and through his own practice to the  effective
control of tuberculosis in India. But Dr Sen is now in prison on false
charges, sentenced for life. India urgently needs him to be free.

 We hope you will take up the cause of Dr Binayak Sen’s freedom with immense
seriousness on the World TB Day.



For more information about this remarkable doctor and his incarceration,
please visit,

www.freebinayaksen.org or www.binayaksen.net





Yours sincerely
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