[afro-nets] PHA 2 media coverage: "Sick of Globalisation"

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PHA 2 media coverage: "Sick of Globalisation"
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PHA 2 media coverage: Inter Press Service- STORY 2: " Sick of
Globalisation"

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HEALTH: Sick of Globalisation
Kintto Lucas

CUENCA, Ecuador, Jul 21 (IPS) - Alternative reports on global
health, presented at the second People's Health Assembly in Ec-
uador this week, question the free-market, neoliberal economic
model and view it as the cause of many of the health problems
facing humanity today.

These include the indiscriminate use of toxic products in agri-
culture, pollution caused by the oil industry, the consumption
of transgenic crops, the destruction of the urban environment by
pollution, and the commercialisation of health services.

The reports by the Global Health Watch and the Observatorio
Latinoamericano de Salud see a healthy life as a fundamental hu-
man right, the enjoyment of which depends on economic, political
and social factors.

The Global Health Watch is a broad collaboration of public
health experts, non-governmental organisations, civil society
activists, community groups, health workers and academics.

Mexican academic Laura Juárez Sánchez, who took part in drawing
up the reports, said that by generating increasing unemployment,
poverty and rural migration, the "capitalist economic model" is
he main cause of the return of illnesses that had been basically
eradicated and of deaths from easily curable ailments.

Juárez Sánchez pointed to the reappearance of cholera and deaths
of people from scabies, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, tonsillitis
and pneumonia. These illnesses are expanding as a result of
"malnutrition and the lack of access to and deterioration of ba-
sic social services like health care, education and housing,"
said Juárez Sánchez, a researcher at the Universidad Obrera, a
Mexican university.

"Rural and urban families are forced to live in overcrowded con-
ditions without piped water or plumbing, to share collective
bathrooms, and to live under roofs of corrugated iron or card-
board," she said.

Alex Zapata, who wrote the chapter of the Global Health Watch
report - also known as the Alternative World Health Report -
that deals with the "mercantilisation" of water, said "capital-
ist globalisation" has led to the privatisation of sewage and
water services.

That means water is becoming a marketable commodity or merchan-
dise to which only those who can afford it have access, which
will have a negative impact on the public health of a large part
of the global population, he said.

The reports were presented Wednesday at the Jul. 17-23 second
People's Health Assembly in the city of Cuenca in southern Ecua-
dor.

Biologist Elizabeth Bravo of Ecuador, who provided information
on the effects of transgenic food crops, said the introduction
of genetically modified seeds is giving certain transnational
corporations control over food production worldwide, "as is al-
ready occurring in the case of soy beans."

"The global market for transgenic soy is the monopoly of a sin-
gle company, the U.S.-based Monsanto, which sells seeds that are
resistant to its Roundup herbicide," she said.

"The (Roundup Ready) seeds are not more productive," said Bravo.
"The only thing they do is make farmers dependent on a weed con-
trol model based on intensive use of an herbicide."

According to the biologist, the expansion of transgenic crops,
besides creating dependency, promotes monoculture farming with
the subsequent decline of essential food crops and the loss of
diversity and food sovereignty.

Bravo also said the effects of transgenic crops are extremely
negative for the poor rural population, which in turn has reper-
cussions on public health.

"The expansion of soy in Argentina has displaced other crops
like rice, corn, sunflowers and wheat, and has pushed other
farming activities into marginal areas. Since 1988, the number
of farms has shrunk by 24.5 percent, with the disappearance of
103,400 family farms.

"Thousands and thousands of families migrate from the country-
side to urban slums every year," said the biologist. Bravo ad-
mitted that more research is needed into the health effects on
humans of transgenic foods, but stressed that studies have found
negative consequences for animals living near fields where ge-
netically modified crops are grown.

The alternative health reports also point to the violence plagu-
ing different regions and threatening the local populations,
mentioning Colombia, in the grip of a four-decade armed con-
flict, and the U.S.-led war on Iraq, launched in March 2003.

Physicians taking part in the People's Health Assembly noted
that the thousands of Iraqi civilians who have fallen victim to
the violence over the past two years included many health pro-
fessionals.

"In 2004 alone 71 medical professors have been killed or have
been intimidated to leave the country. There is complete insecu-
rity in Iraqi hospitals that has resulted in many casualties,"
said Dr. Salam Ismael, secretary-general of the organisation
Doctors for Iraq.

Ismael urged the more than 1,500 delegates from over 70 coun-
tries who are taking part in this week's Assembly to demand sup-
port from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to put an end to
the violence and killing in his country.

He also proposed the creation of an international commission to
investigate war crimes and bring to light the horrors that his
people are suffering.

Hospitals in Iraq are raided and wounded suspects are arrested
without the least respect for their human rights and the Geneva
Convention, said the Iraqi doctor.

What is happening in Iraq is "a war crime of the first order,"
said Dr. Bert De Belder, coordinator of Medical Aid for the
third World (MATW), a health solidarity agency of the Belgium-
based International Action for Liberation (Intal).

Professor Qasem Chowdhury of Bangladesh praised the alternative
reports and underlined the connections between health movements
from all continents that made the second annual People's Health
Assembly possible.

Argentine Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the Pan American Health
Organisation, said the right to a healthy life should be linked
to recognition of cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity.

This recognition, besides taking into account universal access
to health care and social participation, must also take into
consideration traditional medicine, traditional healers and col-
lective intellectual property, she said.

The origins of this week's gathering date back to 1978, during
the WHO annual assembly, when 134 governments, in response to
pressure by social movements, signed the Declaration of Alma Ata
in Kazakhstan (former Soviet Union), committing themselves to
achieving an acceptable level of health for all people of the
world by the year 2000.

The initial enthusiasm on the part of governments gradually
waned, prompting civil society organisations, minorities, in-
digenous peoples and other groups involved in health questions
to take up the banner of "health for all".

The first People's Health Assembly, held in Savar, Bangladesh in
December 2000 under the theme "To Hear the Unheard", drew more
than 1,500 participants from 75 countries.

One of the achievements of the meeting in Bangladesh was the ap-
proval of the People's Health Declaration, based on a vision of
a better and healthier world - a starting point for a global
health movement, said Dr. Jaime Breilh with the Health Research
and Advisory Centre, one of the groups that organised the Assem-
bly. (END/2005)