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People's Health Movement
The People's Health Movement (PHM) is a network of individuals and organizations with presence in almost every country in the world. Rather than trying to build one large organization with centralized campaigns and structure, PHM tries to energize and link together existing efforts at different levels — grassroots, district, national, international, organizing, lobbying and policy-making, academic and research, etc., in order to promote increased access to health, health care and social justice. The Hesperian Foundation has played an active role in PHM since its inception in 2000.
Why Hesperian is involved
The Hesperian Foundation became involved in PHM in order to contribute to the movement to improve the state of the world's health. Because our publications, from Where there is no doctor through our current titles, have grown out of and became the practical handbooks for the Primary Health Care movement, this is a logical extension of our work. Hesperian also feels called to show our support and solidarity with people resisting the policies of the U.S. government, which seem designed to make people's health worse and limit access to care. In order to achieve Health for All, all sectors of society must stand up and demand it. When the PHM steering committee asked Hesperian to begin organizing a People's Health Movement in the U.S., we felt that we had no choice but to participate. Please join us and let us join you in your work to improve peoples health.
Origins of PHM
In 1978, at the Alma-Ata Conference, (PDF) health ministers from 134 countries, in association with the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, pledged to achieve 'Health for All by the Year 2000' and dedicated themselves to implement Primary Health Care as the means to achieve it.
Unfortunately, people's health status has not improved and, in many cases, has deteriorated further. Two decades after Alma-Ata, we are still facing a global health crisis characterized by growing inequalities within and between countries. As people's living standards decline, new threats to health are emerging and old threats are reasserting themselves. The forces of corporate-led globalization are preventing a more equitable distribution of resources, a necessary condition for the improvement of people's health.
Within the health sector, the failure to implement Primary Health Care has significantly aggravated the global and local health crisis. Pressure must be exerted on decision-makers, governments and the private sector to make "Health for All" a priority through the development and support of people-centered initiatives and oppose the corporate vision of "Health for All Who Can Pay."
In December 2000, in Savar, Bangladesh, delegates from around the world founded the People's Health Movement and drafted the People's Charter for Health (PDF) to work towards achieving Health for All. Since then, PHM has grown through a number of international and local campaigns, meetings and exchanges, most recently the Second Peoples Health Assembly held in Cuenca, Ecuador, in July 2005.
Alma-Ata (PDF) called on the world to achieve basic health care for all the world's population by the year 2000 and recommended comprehensive primary health care as the best means to this end. Unfortunately, after Dr. Mahler's tenure, WHO pulled back on this recommendation, and with UNICEF, the International Monetary Fund and others, began to concentrate on top-down single-issue care, such as bed nets, micro-nutrients and immunizations.
For more information on PHM, visit the People's Health Movement website.