Health and Justice for All
Dr. Sylvia Estrada-Claudio (left) and Shirley Douglas (right) at Inter Pares' 2006 Annual General Meeting.
VOLUME 28, NUMBER 4, NOVEMBER 2006
We are one in the belief that health is a basic right that cannot be made to follow the logic of profit. Like you, we believe in the standard of accessible, appropriate and competent health care for all.
Dr. Sylvia Estrada-Claudio, co-founder and chair of the Board of Likhaan, a national women's health organization in the Philippines and long-time Inter Pares counterpart, was speaking at our Annual General Meeting this past April on the relationship between health and social justice. Sylvia reminded us that in 1978, governments around the world supported a global commitment to "Health for All" by the year 2000. Public health care in many countries, in the North and the South, has been privatized and downsized, and thus even less accessible to those who need it most - the poor and vulnerable.
On that April evening in Ottawa, Sylvia shared the podium with Shirley Douglas. Shirley is the national spokesperson for the Canadian Health Coalition. In an impassioned and lively discussion, Sylvia and Shirley emphasized the importance for all of us to speak out to protect and promote our basic right to health. Whether we live in the Philippines or Canada, being healthy means living in a safe and secure environment, having enough to eat, and having access to publicly funded and administered health care.
Health for all is a distant dream in the Philippines - social conditions have improved little, and forty-five percent of all families in the country live below the poverty line. Funding for public health care is low, and the two-tier health system ensures that access to formal health care is largely the private domain of the wealthy few.
In Canada, the public health system is also under threat. Shirley reminded us of the "extraordinarily fierce battle" that her father, Tommy Douglas, undertook to create publicly funded health care, and warned that we have to assert our ownership of our health care system. "We are going to have to get very serious about this," Shirley said. "How much will be taken away before we open our mouths?" Citizen action and engagement is required, and in this respect we can learn a lot from the work of our Likhaan colleagues in the Philippines.
Likhaan's approach to health emphasizes the link between health, poverty and social conditions, and focuses on empowering women in impoverished communities to take charge of their health care needs. At the same time, Likhaan organizes communities to demand better and more accessible public health services. The women of Likhaan have become leaders in demanding accessible, quality health services. And their efforts have begun to show results with improvements in the availability and delivery of health services.
"Poverty is not merely a matter of material lack," said Sylvia. "People are less poor when they feel they have the skills to intervene. I wish I could tell you how women - many of them with very little formal education, some of them suffering the violence of their partners, and all of them dealing with poverty - have become empowered. I wish I could take you to them somehow."
An integral approach to health includes publicly funded universal health services. Equally important, poverty and inequality must be addressed with improved housing and employment, and action taken on workplace health, mental health, and violence against women.
As Shirley told Sylvia after hearing her speak about her work in the Philippines, "It is not easy to fight, day in, day out, without becoming embittered, or depressed beyond repair, and to actually make an enormous difference against insurmountable odds. We celebrate you."
This Bulletin celebrates the actions of people in the Philippines, in Canada, in Burma and in Guatemala, to transform "Health for All" from the promise of a distant dream into the concrete and empowered reality of a fundamental right.
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