PHM-Exch> PHM Statement at Executive Board Meeting of WHO in Geneva on Social Determinants of Health

[amit sen]

Thank you, Chair, for giving me
the opportunity of addressing the distinguished Members of the WHO Executive
Board on behalf of Medicus Mundi International and the group of WHO Watchers following
the work of the current EB session.
 
We would like to place our views
as regards the report on the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health
held in Rio de Janeiro in October 2011. We believe that the conference was an opportunity to
purposively build upon the valuable report of the Commission on Social Determinants
of Health. 
 
However, in many ways, the
Conference missed this opportunity. The political Declaration does not break
new ground and does not chart out a fresh approach to problems that are widely acknowledged
as pervasive, acute and requiring urgent attention.
 
We urge Member Countries to
consider the following as imperatives while addressing the social determinants
of health:
 
1. Building and strengthening of
equity-based social protection systems and effective publicly provided and
publicly financed health systems.
 
2. Use of progressive taxation,
wealth taxes and the elimination of tax evasion to finance action on the social
determinants of health. 
 
3. Use of health impact
assessments to document the ways in which unregulated and unaccountable
transnational corporations and financial institutions on the one hand, and the
global trading regime on the other, constitute barriers to Health for All.
 
4. Reconceptualisation of aid for
health as an international obligation and reparation, that is legitimately owed
to developing countries under basic human rights principles. 
 
5. Development and adoption of a
code of conduct in relation to the management of institutional conflicts of
interest in global health decision making. 
 
6. Development of monitoring
system that provide disaggregated data on a range of social stratifiers as they
relate to health outcomes.
 
We remain hopeful that the
powerful possibilities of addressing the fundamental roots of ill health, by
paying attention to its social determinants, can still be realized. But for
that to happen we believe a bold approach is necessary that targets the
up-stream structural determinants.
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