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Fight Globalisation of Health Industry!  - Daily Alert - People's Health Assembly - 5 December 2000

Daily Alert - 5 December 2000

 
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Fight Globalisation of Health Industry! 
  
The People’s Health Assembly got off to a rousing start with a call for the people’s health movement to evolve a clear strategy to fight the negative impact of globalisation on health systems around the world. At the inaugural session of the five day international meet Mr Qasem Chowdhury, coordinator of the PHA Secretariat, said that ‘Health for All’ should be a major part of the international development agenda. There was need he said to build an integrated movement for people-centred healthcare as opposed to the profit-driven global health industry.
 
In a special message read out to the Assembly the Prime Minister of Mozambique, Dr Pascoal Mocumbi, said that in his country where 70 percent of the population lived below the absolute poverty line the government had the responsibility of guaranteeing access to health care. “Community must be a participatory actor in the health system that is designed for it and directed towards it” his statement said.
 
Mr N.H.Antia from India who chaired the inaugural session said that we are meeting at a time when greed has reached its limits and the pendulum has started to swing. “The new process of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation, have told the death knell of Health for All, and it would also be the death knell of the planet if we don’t take adequate corrective measures at this stage” he added. Mr Antia hoped that discussions emerging from the Assembly woud give a new dimension of thinking on the problems of health, that “we no longer be cowed down by a few people who have converted sickness into a business and industry”.
 
Mr Govinda Pillay, a four-time member of the Legislative Assembly in the southern Indian state of Kerala pointed out that though his state was considered poor in terms traditional economic indicators such as per capita income and industrial investments, is yet the richest state in India in social development indicators such as healthcare and education.
 
“We achieved this not by conventional methods but through mobilisation of the masses at the grassroot level” he explained. The gains of the `Kerala model’, which has been praised throughout the world however was under threat he said from cuts in subsidies for services such as healthcare under pressure from international funding agencies.”
 
Mr Prasad Misra, Health Minister of the northern Indian Orissa state, suggested countries like India, which have a long indigenous medicine tradition like Ayurveda, must give emphasis to developing these systems. He argued that these traditional medicines would be more affordable to the poor people.
 
James Orbinski of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) said that for PHA 2000 to be the beginning of a genuine global movement for primary healthcare it needs a clear vision,, sense of action and voice. “ Today we substitute charity for duty” he said “This is simply not good enough” NGOs he said have accepted this charity and not fought hard enough for change.
 
The PHA-2000 inaugural session also heard the testimonies of grass-roots people from Tanzania, Ecuador, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom about the problems that ordinary people go through due to the dehumanisation of health systems worldwide.
  

 

Aboriginals in Australia
Down, Out and Under
By Bob Burton

CANBERRA (IPS) - Australia’s indigenous peoples are now enjoying a bigger health budget than ever before, but health activists and experts say the generous infusion of federal funds is not enough to cure a myriad of ills brought about by centuries of abuse and neglect.
 
Indeed, they say that Canberra needs to rethink much of its policies - health and otherwise - regarding Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders if it is serious about seeing the country’s indigenous peoples as physically fit as the rest of the population.
 
Indigenous organisations are already stepping up efforts to get state governments to change their policies and improve health standards in their areas. In some cases, indigenous groups are making a bid to co- ordinate health services in their respective communities so that more money would actually go to health care instead of to the state coffers.
 
One group that is trying that is the Jawoyn Association in the Northern Territory. Its health care co-ordinator, Irene Fisher, explains, ‘’The Northern Territory Health Department takes a 50 percent cut on health funding as on costs, so we thought, let’s cut out that middle person and we might have a little bit more funding for services. The same applies to housing.’’
 
Experts say indigenous Australians need every health cent that comes their way. Says Fran Baum, the national president of the Public Health Alliance: ‘’The simple fact is that indigenous Australians die on average 20 years earlier than non-indigenous Australians. We are dealing with a population that is traumatised with dispossession and all that.’’
 
Baum and Fisher are among the participants in the People’s Health Assembly at Savar, Bangladesh. The meeting, which will focus on grassroots health initiatives, has attracted more than 1,200 activists and non governmental organisation (NGO) workers from all over the world. According to Baum, Australia has much to learn from other countries, especially when it comes to dealing with indigenous peoples. She remarks, ‘’Australia really hasn’t made much progress in the health area that other countries such as Canada and the United States have. On a global basis, Australia is an international disgrace.’’
 
Aborigines may well be the major thorn in Australia’s conscience. Before the first Europeans landed on the continent in the late 18th century, Aborigines numbered some 300,000. Today, the combined total count of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is about 386,000 or two percent of the entire Australian population of 19 million.
 
Historians say Australia’s indigenous people were treated almost like animals by the white settlers, who took over their lands and practically wiped them out in some areas. Up until the mid-20th century, Aborigines barely had access to basic services. And up until 1967, they did not even enjoy full citizenship rights. In recent years, the federal government has made it a point to try to rectify many of the injustices done to Australia’s indigenous population.
 
For instance, Senator John Herron, who is the Commonwealth Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Affairs, has pointed to increases in funding for indigenous Australians. He says, ‘’Since 1996-97, government expenditure on indigenous health has increased by more than 50 percent in real terms.’’
 
For fiscal year 2000, in fact, the Office of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Services has been allotted 200 million Australian dollars (105 million dollars). This is in keeping with the promise made by Canberra last year of a 100-million-Australian dollar (52 million dollars) increase in indigenous health spending spread over four years. But in one press conference earlier this year here in Canberra, Gustav Nossal, chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, said it was time to ‘’explode the myth that tonnes of money have been thrown at Aboriginal health with no good effect’’.
 
He said that the government spent the equivalent of 57 US cents on health per indigenous Australian compared to 53 cents for each ‘’mainstream Australian’’. But, he argued, ‘’given a health status at least three times worse, this eight percent differential is actually tiny, and when one factors in remoteness - it costs more to do almost anything in a remote community - the difference disappears altogether’’.
 
Fisher more than agrees that the remote locations of many Aboriginal communities have proved a health hazard simply because medical help is often hours away. She says such communities are now suffering from high death rates.
 
‘’One issue was providing assistance with travel for ill community members. Government policy is if it’s over 200 km to a hospital, they can get patient travel,’’ she says. ‘’But our communities are just under that distance. There is no public transport and a taxi into Katherine township costs about 120 Australian dollars, so people have no way of getting there. It’s ludicrous.’’
 
According to the Aborigine and Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC), the unemployment rate among indigenous Australians is 26 percent, compared to eight percent among the non-indigenous population. Indigenous incomes are also approximately two-thirds of the Australian average.
 
Sixty-four percent of indigenous Australians also live in rentals, while nationwide, the share of the population who are not homeowners is 24 percent. Experts say low incomes obviously affect the quality of food and could well decide the frequency of visits to doctors. Overcrowded homes, meanwhile, can hardly promote good health.
 
As it is, indigenous Australians are three times more likely to die in infancy than the rest of the population, according to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mortality Study released a few months ago. The study also says that half of the indigenous population will die before they reach the age of 50, adding that the major causes of mortality among Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are circulatory and respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer and injury.

 
The Nightmare of Neuro-surgeons'
It is a cylindrical object, less than two centimetres long. But when it gets into your head it causes what is called by the medical community as the `Nightmare of Neurosurgeons’. One is speaking here about the ‘rubber’ bullets that Israeli troops have been using repeatedly in retaliation against Palestinian youth and children throwing stones and demanding independence for Palestine. Bullets, that have in less than two months killed upto 12 percent of the 274 Palestinians who have died in the Al Asqa rebellion.
 
Jihad Mashal, a doctor and delegate from the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees to PHA 2000 tells us about these bullets, the horrors of the Israeli occupation, globalisation and more - - - - -
 
On the bullet-for-every-stone logic of Israeli troops:
“ To call them rubber bullets is completely misleading. These are actually made of metal and coated with thin rubber- almost like a jacket to keep them from rusting. When they hit the head at a short distance they create a track in the brain and get lodged inside. Every time the wounded person moves his head the bullet moves around in the soft-tissue of the brain resulting in brain damage- leading to death.”
 
On the impact of globalisation:
“There is of course a positive side to globalisation in that now we are able to get information about Israeli atrocities out to the world through the internet. But the negative aspect is that the Israel lobby in the United States is also more powerful than ever before and wields a lot more influence over the US and European governments. We have great difficulty in getting any of the United Nations resolutions on rights of the Palestinian people implemented”.
 
On the role of international funding agencies:
The United States has threatened to use humanitarian aid to Palestinians as a tool to exert pressure on them to get concessions in their fight against Israel. The US also has great influence over institutions like the World Bank and even European governments and if they all stop funding projects then there is a danger of collapse of the health system in our territories. We are now trying to upgrade the level of local support and also looking for funds from other sources such as the Arab countries.
 
On the health situation in the occupied territories:
Our country is in transition so there is a duality of health problems similar to both the under-developed and the developed world. So for instance while we have problems of malnutrition in some areas it is also true that heart diseases have emerged as a major cause of death among the adult population. The situation is aggravated by the lack of any developmental activities under Israeli occupation and our infant mortality rate is 45 per 1000 compared to 8 per 1000 in Israel and 16 per 1000 in Jordan.
 
On the reason for coming to the People’s Health Assembly:
We have been involved with the PHA movement for quite some time and now need to tell all the people gathered here about the situation in our country due to the Israeli aggression. We have come as the voices of the countless children who have been killed and injured, the thousands of people who have been sealed off from their own land, jobs and all facilities. There has already been a doubling of the people under the absolute poverty line. We are going to witness daily deaths of Palestinians unless international opinion prevents the Israeli aggression.
 
The Union of Palestinian Medical Resource Committees (UPMRC) is a grassroots, community-based Palestinian health organization founded in 1979 by a group of Palestinian doctors and health professionals. Seeking to supplement the decayed and inadequate health infrastructure caused by years of Israeli military occupation the UPMRC’s health programs emphasize prevention, education, community participation, and the empowerment of the individual.

 

Palestinian Injuries  (9673 since September 28, 2000) 26% to the head and neck 70% to the upper part of the body 58% if excluding upper limbs

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