A View from the Secretariat - Edition 03 - 29th Sept 2004
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Dear Friends
Continuing with the previous update, this is to keep you
informed about some more of the PHM Activities all over the world taken as
extracts from recent mails.
PHM Australia
Fran Baum from PHM Australia reports: "We received a
massive injection of enthusiasm from the visit from Prem, Hari, Maria, Delen,
Arturo and David. Their visit means that we have groups active in Sydney,
Adelaide and Melbourne and David Legge and his group has established a list
server for PHM Australia. Both the Adelaide and Sydney groups are having
meetings in the second week of Sept 2004 and will be discussing funding to
send indigenous people to PHA-II. I am also pleased to report that there is
good enthusiasm from young people and hopefully they will soon be taking
over some of the organisation from us older ones! We have a national
election announced in Australia and much of our efforts over the next 6
weeks will go into campaigning against our government that took Australia to
war without any mandate from the people. They also are attacking our
national health insurance scheme so we are also active around that issue.
PHM India
Thelma Narayan, Joint convener of PHM India, South
reports:
"The Southern Regional Public Hearing on Right to
Health Care was held successfully on August 29, 2004 at Chennai. There were
over nearly 30 cases of denials presented to the panel set up by the
National Human Rights commission (NHRC) at the public hearing. The
testimonies were really sad and moving. The unnecessary pain, suffering,
humiliation and injustice moved all to anger, but strengthened the resolve
of JSA that a change has to and can be brought about. Justice Bhaskar Rao of
NHRC responded spontaneously in Telugu to the Andhra Pradesh testimonies (A
state where Telugu is the language spoken) and strongly reinforced the need
for the Right to Health and Health Care. The state officials of Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala also responded to the
denials presented".
The Right to Health Care Campaign moved onto the Northern
Region. The regional public hearing for the Northern Region was held on
September 26th 2004 in Lucknow and the Eastern region public hearing at
Ranchi it would be on October 11th 2004.
From PHM East and Central Africa Region
Mwajuma Masaigana a focal point person of East and
Central Africa reports: "As Civil Society organizations, we had
meetings on the Helsinki Group of Citizens Global Platform and the Tanzania
Citizen Platform, where we had a chance to hold meetings with Martin Khor
Kok Peng of the Third World Network and Vijay Pratap of the Socialist Front
- India WSF 2004 Organizing Committee, Tanzania. After WSF in Mumbai all
organizations, which attended (about 14 including PHM), joined hands and
formed the Tanzania Social Forum (PHM is in the Steering Committee and
founder member of TSF), and we have already translated the WSF Charter into
Swahili. There is a plan to have a launching event for the same".
PHM Middle East and North Africa
A hunger strike was started by 7500 Palestinian and Arab
political prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons on 15th August 2004 in
protest against the gross violations of their rights and inhumane prison
conditions which continue as Israel refuses to meet the demands for
improvement of conditions in Israeli prisons and detention centers. The call
for hunger strike was given by the Palestinian Non-Governmental
Organizations Network (PNGO).
Mr. Jihad Mashal of UPMRC, Palestine presented PHM at the
Moroccan Social Forum and has received good response from the people.
Global Health Watch (GHW)
Recently GHW had sent a letter to WHO detailing the
complete process of GHW and the following has been the extract from the
response of the WHO ?Thank you for your letter of 5 July 2004..."We
appreciate that the initiative has the potential to add constructively to
the efforts of many actors including WHO, working to improve global health.
It may also serve to help those outside the public health arena to
understand the work of public health entities and how other factors
influence results. As the work progresses and gains momentum you may find
information produced by WHO of use. We would of course be pleased to clarify
any questions that you may have about this or any other information. We wish
you every success in continuing the promotion of the global health
agenda."
Meetings in the Pipeline
Preparations are on for a strong PHM presence at the
Conferences of the Canadian Society of International Health in October 2004.
Contact Maria Zuniga at maria@iphcglobal.org
for further details.
Also for a significant input into the Mexico summit for
Health Research in Mexico City organized by WHO/GFHR from 16-21 November
2004 contact Ravi Narayan at secretariat@phmovement.org
for further details
Best wishes
The PHM Secretariat Team
PS: One of the purposes of these short updates from the
secretariat in the exchange is to invite the 'PHM - Digital conduits' to
disseminate the information further to the e-marginalised groups with whom
they are working [Digital conduits are the PHM friends who are moderately
e-enabled and could act as a conduits to disseminate information and bring
the voices of the e-marginalised into this newsletter. So do circulate this
newsletter to others, who cannot access and send us their responses and news
about their activities]
