Huddled together

When it rains we the kind

Get wet. Our umbrella is not

Big enough for two.

When it stops we the kind

Get sick. Our dampness is what

Causes us pneumonia.

During sickness we the kind

Get poor. The local hospital

Is not a charity.

Faced with hunger we the kind

Get mean. Our bodies curse

Our moral self.

When it rains we the mean

Remain dry.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/freemind/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Understanding Health For All

There seems to be so much confusion regarding terminology within People's Health Movement. We hear talk of 'upper-case People's Health Movement' and 'lower-case people's health movement'. 'Health For All' seems to be the buzz word used by everybody today, from private insurance companies and corporate hospitals to Right to Health lobbyists and community health workers.

Here is Dr. Halfdan Mahler, the grand old man of the Health For All movement breaking it down in the simplest of terms. According to him the concept of Health For All is a value system/ spiritual belief. It requires a leap of faith. You have to believe that everyone is entitled to try and live in perfect health. You have to believe that any attempt to take away this freedom is wrong. Then you act.

Taking it from there, People's Health Movement is then the largest network of Health For All believers. It is the most visible face of such a belief. Using new technologies such as the internet and cheap air travel it unites individuals, organisations and networks to work towards Health For All at all levels. Its core manifesto is the People's Charter for Health, an action plan to achieve the world it believes in.

So People Health Movement is not a movement after all. It is the biggest network within the Health For All movement. If it was called the Network Of People Believing In Health For All And Then Deciding To Do Something About It then half the confusion would be cleared away. But there is no denying that PHM rolls of the tongue more easily than NOPBIHFAATDTOSAI.

If you dont believe that everybody, I mean everybody, has the right to try and live a life in perfect health then you cant use 'Health For All' in its profound, genuine sense. In the world we live in everyone suffers from some curtailment of this freedom. The poor, the sick suffer more. However such curtailment can never be morally right. While forcing people to live in unhealthy environments, preventing their access to the best possible medical care, allowing them to be subject to humiliation and hate may sometimes be temporarily unavoidable it can never be morally condoned.

An individual or institution who then uses the 'Health For All' term to promote itself but condones even the temporary infringement on people's Right to Health is then merely 'HFA washing' or 'hfasing'. Similar to pink washing, the phenomenon of corporate houses using breast cancer awareness and charity as an excuse to market their products. See Think Before You Pink for more.

To sum it up. The idealistic concept of Health For All finds practical expression in the lives of thousands of individuals and institutions who constitute the Health For All movement. The largest network of such believers is the People's Health Movement. However there seems to be others who use the 'Health For All' term carelessly and sometimes for selfish purposes.

Getting my priorities right

This month we are conducting an intensive campaign in the 21 villages of our health outreach programme to detect new cases of TB following a spurt in the incidence of the disease among newly returned migrant workers. This however sometimes adds a little surreality to my life.

Picture a bearded lab technician, a thin young doctor and an elderly Malavasi woman who is the local health auxiliary driving through the Avalur valley on a motorcycle. We stop at a house where the health auxiliary says she swears the man coughs a lot. He is not at home but has gone out with his goats. So the health auxiliary sets off down the road calling you his name while we sputter along behind her on the bike. Suddenly there is an answering call from up ahead. Soon an elderly man comes into view.

"Do you cough a lot, Aiya?", I ask as I dismount the bike. "Not really", he says, "But I occasionally have shooting pains down the side of my leg." "No cough? No fever? No weight loss?", I persist. "No, just leg pain", he replies. "He does cough", says the health auxiliary testily, possibly upset that her find is no longer allowing her prove that she has indeed surveyed the village for people with possible symptoms of TB. "Well, I occasionally cough at night", he finally admits. He soon finds himself sitting side-saddle on our motorcycle which is parked on the middle of the road while I auscultate his chest. The lab technician mutters darkly about the value of time. "Can you give us some sputum to test?", I ask. "I don't want a plastic cup", he says, viewing the proffered sputum cup suspiciously, "But if you have medicines for my leg pain I will surely take that."

A community health oriented Indian Christian

‘The Jews expected a messiah, and perhaps they had hopes of Jesus. But they were soon disappointed. Jesus talked a strange language of revolt against existing conditions and the social order. In particular he was against the rich and the hypocrites who made religion a matter of certain observances and ceremonial. Instead of promising wealth and glory, he asked people to give up even what they had for a vague and mythical Kingdom of Heaven. He talked in stories and parables, but it is clear that he was a born rebel who could not tolerate existing conditions and was out to change them. This was not what the Jews wanted, and so most of them turned against him and handed him over to the Roman authorities.”

- Jawaharlal Nehru (1949, 85)

“Christ took pity on people and came to their aid, whether they were spiritually ill as a result of sin or physically sick. His attention was given to the sick person with whom he frequently talked, showing his preference for the poor but without excluding anyone in need who appealed to him.

Jesus considered suffering and sickness as forming part of the ‘less human’ situation and we are asked to endeavour to make these ‘more human’.”

“Since Christians are the leaven, we must reach out towards the masses by providing simple, accessible and promotional health care according to our own possibilities, modest as they are, or in conjunction with the public services, where this is allowed.”

- cf populorum progression, 20

“And because the life of Jesus has the significance and transcendence to which I have alluded, I believe that He belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world; to all races and people, it matters little under what flag, name or doctrine they may work, profess a faith, or worship a God inherited from their ancestors.”

- Mahatma Gandhi