Food for a soul searching thought
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Human Rights Reader 118
WOULD YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE (AT LEAST PART-TIME) A HEALTH
AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST?
A VERY INFORMAL AND TENTATIVE QUIZZ(*)
Going through the following questions may give you a clue.
Do you engage in any of the following?
*· Advancing people's health rights, be it in Primary Health
Care, in patients rights or in equitable access to treatment?
*· Having employers' taking responsibility to protect workers'
health?
*· Resisting and opposing the known damaging health impacts of
globalization?
*· Resisting moves towards privatization of essential health
services?
*· Protecting the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS?
Do you contribute to bring power to the people through any of
the following?
*· Strengthening people's voices in decision-making through or-
ganizing and uniting beneficiaries and through building their
political consciousness?
*· Promoting a vision of health guided by goals for Health For
All as a right?
*· Challenging the current paths of globalization by engaging in
the struggles over trade policies (e.g., GATS, TRIPS) and over
global policies and practices affecting the health of the poor?
*· Advancing health rights at the national political level and
directly engaging on health issues at the local level?
*· Advancing health by participating in the struggles over in-
come and employment, food security, poverty and discrimination?
*· Supporting the informal economy as an important income gen-
erator for the poor?
*· Denouncing the negative impact of corporate practices and
commercial interests in health?
*· Denouncing the privatization attempts of essential public
services (water, sanitation, health care, electricity) and the
lack of access of the poor to the same public services?
*· Denouncing public-private partnerships that give undue weight
to the private sector in decision-making in the public domain?
*· Advocating for grater real beneficiaries' participation thus
fostering greater transparency and accountability in the deci-
sion-making over the use of resources for health?
Do you directly engage yourself in health issues in the interest
of equity, justice and health rights?
*· By getting involved in the struggle over equity in general
and over gender equality in particular, especially in response
to the HIV and AIDS pandemic (including access to treatment,
home care and ancillary services)?
*· By demanding trans-national corporate responsibility in re-
gards to health and nutrition issues and to safe working condi-
tions worldwide?
*· By monitoring and denouncing injustices in the distribution,
migration of and investment in health workers and in the protec-
tion of their working conditions?
*· By demanding greater investment in the public sector health
services?
*· By supporting thre incorporation of traditional health ser-
vices into PHC?
*· By struggling for universal access to quality health care and
to PHC?
*· By getting involved in the protection of poor households from
inequitable cost burdens related to their health and health
care?
*· By actively promoting public literacy in health, in health
systems and in treatment alternatives?
Do you regularly get involved in discussions with health work-
ers, traditional health workers, rural, urban and minority civil
society members and with labour unions in processes related to
health and welfare?
Do you work with others in fostering a unified and shared analy-
sis that can lead to shared goals and strategies in the area of
health as a right?
Do you get involved in strategies and campaigns related to all
the above, and in building common tactical platforms by identi-
fying key common opportunities and critical constraints, as well
as major strategic allies and opponents?
Does whatever you do of the above lead to agreements on mecha-
nisms and actions to:
* Strengthen linkages and build networks?
* Empower beneficiaries?
* Encourage the sharing of resources? and
* Prioritize solidarity action?
(*): This quiz is to be graded by each of you in private consul-
tation with your own self.
--
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn
Mostly adapted from equinetafrica.