TO
ALL PARTICIPANTS OF THE 2nd WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
CONCLUSIONS
OF THE 1ST INTERNATIONAL FORUM FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE HEALTH
OF PEOPLE
HEALTH AS
AN ESSENTIAL HUMAN NEED, A RIGHT OF CITIZENSHIP AND A PUBLIC GOOD HEALTH
FOR ALL IS POSSIBLE AND NECESSARY ...
Organizers:
Latin American Association of Social Medicine – ALAMES
Brazilian Center for Studies on Health - CEBES
Porto Alegre City Government – PMPA / Municipal Health Secretary –
SMS
Rio Grande do Sul State Government / State Health Secretary
The
participants of the 1st International Forum for the Defense
of the Health of People, accomplished in Porto Alegre – Brazil, on
January 29th and 30th, call on all the people of
the world, all women and men who feel responsibilities, challenges and
the imperative to build fair and equitative societies as theirs... to
gather around these words to make them publicized and transformed on
sustained actions...
We
understand that this 2nd World Social Forum starts a new step
on the fight for the universalization of social rights, and particularly
the right to health, as an expression of the right of life, since in our
understanding health is the expression of conditions and quality of
life, not only the occasional access to health services.
We
want to denounce to the world the devastating effects of the
macroeconomic adjustment policies and the militarization of
international relationships over the possibility and quality of
people’s life, as well as to affirm that these effects are not
neoliberal economic policies exceptional accidents, but the real essence
of a logic that aims the maximization of profits, the destruction of
States’s social welfare measures and the very identity of the national
states, dividing the world through a huge social apartheid where
regions, countries and continents are relegated to the condition of
spectators of the immense accumulation of international capital. It results
in a very unmerciful side of the so called economic or capital
globalization: the deep inequity established as a perpetuating logic for
the social injustice, making every day richer the riches and desperately
poorer the poor people, making weak the infants’s and seniors’s
lives and giving to poverty a feminine profile. As a result of these
inequities, the poor of the world look at the rich countries as from the
other side of the shopping malls windows, searching for the paradise,
which is denied to them by the same world economic order renown as a
socially segregating and ecologically unsustainable model, by means of
economic migrations.
We
understand that the Argentinean tragedy is the direct consequence of the
sustained and faithful application of neoliberal principles, which
ignore interests and needs of the citizens, a awaited and lots of times
denounced product of a logic that cares for capital’s health but not
for the people’s health.
We
would like to alert all of you that the world-widening of the capital is
not an abstraction, since it defines life quality possibilities, as well
as it is not made by abstract beings like the World Bank and IMF, since
these organisms reflect all the directives of the big capitalistic
conglomerates that dominate the world nowadays, supported by their
political managing of governments of many rich and poor countries, which
dominant classes are committed to the health of their and other one’s
capital instead of to the health and welfare of
their own people. So, we affirm that the fight place against the
bad dominant world order finds its expression in every town, region and
continent by means of a possible and necessary fight that call on every
woman and man to defend their dignity and the dignity of future
generations towards a fair, equitative and solidarian world.
We understand that we are frequently trapped within a social
fascism where those options, which are offered to us, are so bad and
poor that all we have is resistance fights only, for fear that the
future may be even worse. Laws are often disrespected and violated by
their own formal guardians, generating rights’s vulgarization and the
loss of meaning of formal freedoms. Only politicization of the debate
and its essencialization can give us political power and creativity to
create another world with the defense of social rights and the
unvulgarization of life.
Health
as a complete expression of economical and social determinations about
health conditions is a fight field for the full respect of social,
economical and cultural people’s rights. For us, health is an
essential human right, a primary right of citizenship and a public good.
It also is a duty of the State, which is desired to be the undertaker of
public interest, defending those interests in the market arena, avoiding
the purchasing of health. So, we defend the
State
come back to its citizen and life’s defense functions through the
assurance of dignity on politics as a public and democratic place. We
revindicate that all states defend social welfare and health systems
where universalization, integrality and equity are the founding
characteristics inserted and respected within their constitutional and
legal texts, as well as in the organization and financing of health
systems and services.
We
demand from politics and economy to have their ethical principles to
defend human beings dignity recovered and to pronounce the world
widening of solidarity and life defense with all economical effort
directed towards people’s needs satisfaction, which includes the right
to life in the first place.
It
is a scandal that economical adjustments and efficiency searches for the
health sector never demand prices and pharmaceutical costs control,
since medicines industry are directly linked to the wild accumulation in
health sector, imposing exorbitant prices within the Third World and
blocking those initiatives for development of national pharmaceutical
industries. We demand exclusive patent rights are broken, giving rise to
a wider perspective of social and economical development for medication
and health equipment.
We
want to manifest our extreme suspicion about all speeches of
international financing agencies, governments and political parties from
rich and poor countries that speak about poverty and the need to fight
it without mentioning the need to change economical development model
which is generating unemployment, destruction of social rights
warranties and making the inequity abyss deeper.
We
challenge these organisms, governments and corporations to accept a
public and democratic debate of a development with a human face.
By
no means we deny the need for reforming health systems and states so
that they can be closer to the integral and equitative human development
ideals. What we do not accept is the imposition of one only logic
focused on the interests of international capital market.
In
a moment of a great scientific development of humanity, the themes of
ethics and equity are even more important to defend health as a public
good. Specifically in relation to the human genome charting, it sounds
essential to assure the right of humankind, since genetical inheritance
is inherited by every human being, avoiding a purchasing that would
increase inequities and would have devastating effects over people’s
access to science progress.
Facing
all these elements, we propose:
-
a strong and steady manifestation against neoliberal logic and
its consequences over the right to life;
-
solidarity to the Argentinean people and to all countries where
neoliberalism destroys social rights and the specific worry with the
increasing war and its internationalization in Colombia;
-
a strong resistance against integration to Americas Free Commerce
Zone – ALCA, understood as an additional attack against our economies
and our sovereignty;
-
a
search for the essence and politicization of the debate, with the
collective building of a Political Agenda for Defense of Health as a
Right, defining health as an Essential Human Need, as Public and
Citizenship Policy, as a Public Good and Duty of the State. By Public
Policy Agenda we mean the democratic and participative process of
building of what our societies, in each town, region and continent, want
and need, having in mind the concrete accomplishment of agreements that
warrant under participation human dignity and an ethics beyond immediate
financial interests. There is an urge for a world public debate about a
development model towards equity. As part of this effort, we propose the
agreement to the elaboration of an alternative report on equity on life
and health conditions;
-
the
reivindication for People’s Representation Councils beside organisms
like MERCOSUL and the World and Pan-American Health Organizations,
aiming to express directly our needs, without the frequently
irresponsible mediation of our governments;
-
the
inclusion in each country’s judicial legislation about the right to
health, under universality, integrality and equity, with the assignation
of enough resources to answer to social needs on life and health
quality, mobilizing national and international capital to fight against
those programs that focus on poverty without warranting universal
rights, proposing universality with equity as a superior way of social
justice;
-
for
the same reason, we condemn and repel Colombia’s health care model,
known as structured pluralism, which usage has been taking to increasing
exclusion and inequities, and we affirm that no country should adopt
such a model, which is contrary to the interests of people’s health;
-
we
also alert against and condemn the attempts of Paraguayan government to
reform, without any social participation, the Law n. 1032 and the
Sanitary Code, besides trying to make private the Social Welfare
Institute (IPS), making even weaker all the warranties of social rights
in the country, applying the questioned principles of the Colombian
system;
-
we
support the attempts of constitutional reform in Uruguay to warrant the
right to health of all Uruguayans and not only the indigent ones, like
it is presently established by law;
-
we
affirm the defense and warranty of the right to health in Brazil
through the warranty of enough resources and the accomplishing of
universality, equity and integrality as principles not warranted to all
population by the Brazilian State yet;
-
we
condemn all and every form of violation of the rights to health by
public or private institutions, with special emphasis on the control of
violations caused by the states and governments themselves, searching
for the constitution of an International Observatory to observe and
control these violations and to show them to the International Justice
Court;
-
we
reivindicate from governments to adopt one figure public goals for all
health and quality of life indicators, reducing inequities related to
not answered needs, reducing maternal and infants mortality rates,
unemployment, lack of proper housing, etc to one figure only, in the
same way it is done for economical or capital’s health goals...
We
call on you to make a formal and fraternal international call to all
workers, organizations and inhabitants so that in those countries where
there are multinational pharmaceutical industries with subsidiaries in
Argentina or not, to break all privilege or right to patents or property
over medicines which are asked and needed to allow the survival of
Argentinean population: medication is a public good, as Brazil and South
Africa have shown and done in relation to drugs against AIDS;
We
reivindicate that Health as a Right of Humanity to be one of the central
themes on the 3rd World Social Forum in 2003;
That
Health of the People be one of the central themes on the Rio + 10 Forum,
which will happen in Africa in 2002;
That
we formally protest against the violation of union manifestation rights
in Uruguay and against civil rights violations of Paraguayan citizens
who are members of the Patria Libre Movement and were victims of
arbitrary imprisonment and persecuted by the police on behalf of the
Paraguayan Government;
We
call for a wide process of mobilization towards the accomplishing of the
2nd International Forum for the Defense of the Right to
Health of People in Porto Alegre on January of 2003, before the 3rd
World Social Forum;
And
a wide and transectoral calling on the 1st World Health
Forum, to be performed in the first semester of 2004 in Porto Alegre
also;
That
all individuals and governmental or non governmental organizations who
and which agree with the principles and guidelines proposed on this
document gather to the invitation for our meetings in 2003 and 2004, as
well as in the proposed initiatives;
That
we organize a continental protest against the transformation of health
in a purchased good, with all workers from public services who work
under the contribution regimens, stopping all the charging of their care
for one day, while those where there is no charge that work wearing some
sign to show to patients the aim of the demonstration for the right to
health.
We
propose and we invite you to act on our places of life as citizens of
the world, fighting for a society oriented towards social justice and
equity, where respect for human dignity goes beyond the wild
accumulation of capital. We call on you to reflect about and to act,
moved by hope and indignation.
Porto Alegre, January 30th, 2002.
For
contacts and manifestation, please write to joser@sms.prefpoa.com.br
or armandon@portoweb.com.br
o
alames@movinet.com.uy
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