Reappropriating Health for All

1
Reappropriating Health for All

• By and for the People
• After 25 years
• of Neoliberal Capture

2
Neoliberal and Social Justice Approaches to Health

• Symptoms, short term
• Magic medical bullets
• Interventions through health services
• Focuses on individuals and blames the victims
• Charity and international aid as sources of
  funding
• Maintains status quo of extreme concentration of
  wealth and power

• Root causes, long term
• Free people from miserable living conditions
• Meeting of basic needs, food, water, shelter,
  security
• Focuses on structural poverty and violence and
  blames the system
• Redistribution and economic justice as sources of
  funding
• Fair and rational international economic order

3
Economy, Ecology, Equity

• Current international order is grotesquely unjust
  but also wildly irrational
• Economics as if people and their planet mattered
• Cannot achieve Health for All without meeting
  peoples basic needs
• Cannot meet peoples basic needs without fair
  distribution and sustainable use of the earths
  resources
• Cannot achieve fair distribution in order to meet
  basic needs for health without democracy
  political action

4
Millions through charity/aid or billions
through economic justice ?

• With massive South to North transfers, who are
  the real donors and the real recipients ?
• Cancel debt, save poor countries 382 billion p/a
• Fair trade and save 700 billion p/a
• Tax speculation and save 250 billion p/a
• Tax offshore accounts and save 160 billion p/a
• A fair, rational, stable and sustainable
  international economic order.

5
The right politics and the right partners for
Health for All

• Real democracy, real human rights and real
  information
• 6 billion people or 3000 CEOs ?
• People's movements, trade unions, students,
  farmers, workers !
• Real social justice political parties
• People and democracy not stakeholders and "good
  governance" as defined by IFIs
• World Social Forum

6
Four Myths to Bust

• Complex, will take decades? Simple, could be
  done tomorrow
• Scarce resources? In a world of plenty, whose
  recession and whose boom?
• More research needed? We know everything we need
  to know !
• Political will is lacking? Remember there are two
  superpowers !