PEOPLE'S HEALTH ASSEMBLY 2000: A RESOUNDING SUCCESS
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Two years in the making and a mere five days of beehive activity and
the Assembly convened and launched its grand beginning. Surpassing all
expectations, we finally had almost 1500 participants from 94 countries
in attendance. Nobody was let down: the program lived up to everybody's
expectations. There was energy in the air and participation was very
active. The mornings program covered 5 main topics: Health, life and
well-being, Inequality, poverty and health, Health care and health ser-
vices (for the poor), Environment and survival, and The ways forward.
For each topic, people from all over the world presented testimonials
illustrating concrete cases of both oppression and successful people's
organization. A microphone remained always open in the plenary floor for
people to react in any way they wanted to any of the presenters' points.
and it was used profusely. The afternoons saw the unfolding of over 100
highly participative concurrent sessions that allowed participants to
discuss much more specific issues of their immediate interest -all of
them related to a people's perspective and outlook on the grave health
problems befalling the poor in each of their countries. During the
Wednesday session, a regional WB representative was sometimes vocifer-
ously called to task and put in his right place having him listen to the
profound objections of the PHA members to his employer's insincere ap-
proaches and misdirected solutions to solve the problems of poverty,
malnutrition and ill-health worldwide.
The media had a ball recording this event. The evenings were filled with
more special interest sessions, both individual and by geographic re-
gions, as well as with artistic performances from the world over.
Stalls and exhibitions welcomed many visitors. The days were full 16
hour days (20 for the organizers) with plenty time for community and
sharing of meals by participants. A daily newsletter was produced every
night to highlight the most salient events. The local organization by
Gonoshasthaya Kendra, our Bangladeshi host NGO in their beautiful campus
outside Dhaka, was commendable and the support by the local community
great; their women prepared and served our meals as an income generation
project.
After laborious participatory reworking, participants adopted the
PEOPLE'S CHARTER FOR HEALTH. This groundbreaking manifest, together with
PHA's Framework Paper and four topical Background Papers which clearly
spell out what PHA stands for can be found in PHA's website at
www.pha2000.org Of course, what counts in all of this is the ways for-
ward. The last day of the Assembly was totally devoted to this. The
voices of over 100 participants were heard and their suggestions re-
corded on six big flipcharts on stage. A sampler of some of the sugges-
tions includes:
-Wide dissemination of the Charter,
-The organization of a solid network and sub-networks on specific issues
-Using the website, mailng lists and email list-servers,
-The translation of PHA documents to many languages including simple lan-
guage versions,
-Challenging local health decision-makers to a dialogue on people's
health issues,
-Setting up local level people's health watches and when needed people's
health tribunals,
-Embarking on one people's health campaign every year on most burning is-
sue
-Coordinating international protest campaigns and mass actions on the
same day worldwide,
-Continuing a publications activity starting with the proceedings of the
-Assembly and the posting of a monthly newsletter on the web,
-Active solidarity work for member organizations facing hardship, strate-
gic alliances with unions and progressive political groups,
-Participation in international meetings to promote PHA's positions,
-Holding annual PHA meetings at national level, monitoring the implemen-
tation of pro-people and anti-people health initiatives worldwide and
reporting on them, and meeting annually in a parallel session to the
-World Health Assembly in Geneva to present the PHA's position in rela-
tion to WHO's annual agenda.
But more of the plan of action will become consolidated in the weeks to
come and will be posted in the above website. PHA will develop a response
capacity and at the same time launch issues for global discussion; it
will thus gain visibility as a serious contender with strong arguments
and will be present in all major debates on health, no matter where they
originate.
It is never too late to join the People's Health Assembly movement -
either as individuals or as organizations. Just drop us a line at
phasec@pha2000.org or gksavar@citechco.net and regularly visit our
website.
PS: PAINFUL ABSENCE
"Many leaders were called, but only few came to pray"
The PHA2000 is purportedly the biggest international people's gathering
specifically aimed at looking at the world health problems from a peo-
ple's perspective. It was a most unprecedented gathering of 1,500 grass-
roots and other leaders coming from the five continents from over 85
countries.
One would think that an event of this caliber --and with all the ad-
vance notice and notoriety that this unprecedented event got-- would
have made the international multilateral agencies purporting to serve
the interests of "the people" flock to it to be counted.
But low and behold they shone by their absence; among them, the two
original UN agencies that co-sponsored the historic Alma Ata Declara-
tion. WHO repeatedly downgraded their commitment to participate from the
director general to the regional director for South Asia to the acting
national WHO representative in Dhaka. UNICEF showed less interest at the
top echelons and one of its regional directors, committed to the cause
of the people had to cancel due to justifiable circumstances; after
that, they went totally un-represented in PHA2000.
The irony of this situation is that the World Bank --an institution
heavily criticized by the delegates from the world over-- did show up to
participate in a meeting in which its actions in health were put under
heavy scrutiny and received unanimous condemnation.
The people's movement now strongly united in a militant coalition for
"Health for all NOW" has taken notice of these absences. All members of
the movement will hold the above senior leaders accountable for their
reticence to come to be counted when the victims of a health system that
neglect the poor was under scrutiny and when a people's perspective was
articulated to deal with the universal problems behind this neglect.
Claudio Schuftan,
Hanoi
mailto:viva@netnam.vn
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