The People’s Health Assembly: Communication challenges

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People’s Health Movement

Towards the People's Health Assembly books 1 - 5

See also
Resource List: Globalisation

Full report: Exchange lunchtime discussion 19 September 2001

Globalisation does not benefit everyone, particularly not the poor. This is the key message of a video about the People’s Health Assembly (PHA) that was discussed by participants at the Exchange lunchtime discussion on 19 September 2001.

The PHA met in December 2000 in Bangladesh and brought together more than 1400 people from grassroots organisations in 93 countries. The global movement that emerged from that meeting aims to re-establish health and equitable development as top priorities in local, national and international policy-making, with comprehensive primary health care as the strategy to achieve these priorities. The PHA Movement aims to draw on and support people’s movements in their struggles to build long-term and sustainable solutions to health problems.

A 20-minute video was introduced to participants. The video helped to explain the process that led to the event in Bangladesh, including more than 18 months of preparatory meetings at local grassroots level in countries in every region of the world. The video highlighted the sense of solidarity, the strong networking opportunities and the unity of purpose that emerged through the five-day event in Bangladesh.

A tangible output from the meeting was the People’s Charter for Health. The Charter sets out key demands on the issues of:

• health as a human right
• tackling the broader determinants of health
• a people-centred health sector
• people’s participation for a health world.

It calls for action to:

• press governments and international organisations to reformulate, implement and enforce policies and practices which respect the right to health
• transform the global trading system including effective regulation of transnational corporations
• cancel Third World debt
• transform the global financial system
• place education and health at the top of the political agenda
• ensure universal human rights
• ensure health and environment impact assessments are incorporated into development activities
• increase the speed at which reductions of greenhouse gases take place
• end the use of occupation and sanctions, and support campaigns and movements for peace and disarmament
• oppose policies that privatise health care and turn it into a commodity
• demand that governments promote, finance and provide comprehensive primary health care
• democratise the UN Security Council
• transform the World Health Organization
• promote, support and engage in activities that encourage people’s involvement in decision making
• ensure people’s organisations are represented in local, national and international fora that are relevant to health.

Since the PHA, local groups that are working to transform the Charter from a dream into a reality have translated the Charter into at least 21 languages.

Participants asked what response there had been to the PHA from governments or international agencies. The then-opposition leader of Bangladesh (now President) gave the closing address and supported the work of the PHA. The Jamaican government is in the process of organising a national People’s Health Assembly. The local city government in St. Petersburg, Russia has been studying the Charter. The World Bank – through a representative, Richard Skolnik, who was one of the speakers – experienced at first hand the hostility and anger of local people around the world at Bank policies that were undermining health services, as well as hearing a powerful collection of well-documented evidence to counter many of the Bank standard arguments. The World Health Organization (WHO) subsequently launched its Civil Society Initiative, in part due to the challenges posed by the PHA.

Participants expressed positive surprise at the enormity of the work that had gone on at the grassroots level to mobilise initial support, and asked whether there was a clear structure for follow up activities, or whether this was being done on an ad hoc basis. A structure and some common points for an international focus are beginning to develop, while maintaining the enthusiastic local activity. This helps to underline the communication challenges that the movement faces.

Group discussions

Participants later broke into two groups to consider some of those challenges. One group looked at:

What role does communication play in moving from declaration to action? What communication strategies could help transform the People’s Charter for Health into a blueprint for action? How can communication help to build a global people’s movement with strong roots in local action?

The second group considered:

What communication strategies could enable the testimony, understanding and knowledge of the poor to play a greater role in determining the agenda around globalisation?

Suggestions from the first discussion group included:

• identifying a clear focus of topics, issues or targets and coordination internationally
• stimulating dialogue and debate around the Charter
• identifying which bodies are responsible for implementing the Charter
• using a range of different approaches at different levels - local, national and international
• documenting and sharing experience of local and national action to provide stimulation and ideas of approaches to try.

The second group concluded that it would be important to:

• arrive at a consensus agreement on what is meant by globalisation
• work at many levels and integrate activities
• build on and improve documentation of positive examples of people’s self-determination to build confidence
• avoid being extractive in identifying good practice, and ensure that local groups and voices are prominent in setting the agenda and providing testimony
• encourage WHO to take the lead on health, not the World Bank.

Further information

Peoples's Health Movement
www.phmovement.org

Towards the People's Health Assembly Books 1 - 5

1. What Globalisation does to People's Health
2. Whatever happened to Health for All by 2000 AD?
3. Making Life Worth Living
4. A World Where We Matter (covers health care issues of women, children and the maginalised sections of society)
5. Confronting Commercialisation of Health Care

This series of five books has been prepared and published by The National Coordination Committee for the Jan Swasthya Sabha, which aims to:

• re-establish health and equitable development as top priorities in policy making with primary health care as a strategy
• forge a local national and global unity of all democratic forces towards building long-term sustainable solution to health
• reinforce the principle of health as abroad inter-sectoral issue.

more on social mobilisation and grassroots communication