As the UN's specialist health agency, the World Health Organization remains the most important international public health institute. The People's Health Movement is therefore monitoring the election of the organization's new Director General. All candidates have been sent a set of questions on key health issues and their answers will be posted on the website to complement their background profiles.
Equity in Health
Election of a new World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General
People\'s Health Movement,
World Health Organisation (WHO) General Candidate Survey
The Framework Convention Alliance for Tobacco Control (FCTC)
The Framework Convention Alliance is a coalition of over 250 groups from more than 90 countries dedicated to support the ratification and implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. As a candidate for the post of Director General of the World Health Organization, the FCTC wrote and sent out questionnaires to solicit various participants' views on tobacco control by asking them to respond to the survey. The questionnaire used can be found at the weblink above.
Access to health: A global problem in need of a global solution
Poirier J: Geneva Health Forum, 30 August 2006
To achieve global access to health care requires the participation of a range of actors including patients, well-organized NGOs and governments that are held accountable. This specific symposium covered a range of issues that are critical to providing access to health care for all. It also outlined the civil and social roles, such as that of the People's Health Movement (PHM).
Child health inequities in developing countries: Differences across urban and rural areas
Fotso JC: International Journal for Equity in Health 5:9, 11 July 2006
Across countries in sub-Saharan Africa, though socioeconomic inequalities in stunting do exist in both urban and rural areas, they are significantly larger in urban areas. Intra-urban differences in child malnutrition are larger than overall urban-rural differentials in child malnutrition, and there seem to be no visible relationships between within-urban inequities in child health on the one hand, and urban population growth, urban malnutrition, or overall rural-urban differentials in malnutrition, on the other
Equity in access to health: Dream or reality?
Hery-Jaona J: Geneva Health Forum, 31 August 2006
This session of the August 2006 Geneva Forum on health explored equity in health, including equity of access to essential drugs. Speakers identified constraints to equity, and suggested that equitable access to health care can only be achieved through reformation of the health sector. Measures proposed included a focus on poor geographic areas; the indirect measurement of the recipient's economic status; payments to poor service recipients; mass campaigns; contracting with NGOs and the active involvement of the poor. Inequity is not only due to social determinants and also demands scaling up financing of health systems.
Equity in access: Interview with Eritrean Health Minister
Krebs V: Geneva Health Forum, 2 September 2006
Hon Minister Salih Meky, Minister of Health of Eritrea, spoke with interviewers at the August 2006 Geneva Forum for Health about achievements and challenges in the field of health in Eritrea and in Africa more generally. In Eritrea, health care is free of charge at point of care. The country has managed to keep under control a number of infectious diseases, but faces the increasing challenge of chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Hospital costs are a major issue. Minister Meky questioned whether there was a simple solution to the brain drain, and urged that it be addressed by the South and by the wealthy countries in the North. He observed that one priority was to improve living conditions and opportunities in the south and another for developed countries to help to train people. He felt that while there ought to be free movement of people, the brain-drain must be solved.
The UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2006
Six years ago, leaders from every country agreed on a vision for the future - a world with less poverty, hunger and disease, greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants, better educated children, equal opportunities for women, and a healthier environment; a world in which developed and developing countries work in partnership for the betterment of all. This report shows where we stand in 2006 toward achieving these goals. The challenges involved in reaching the MDGs are staggering, but there are clear signs of hope.
Towards global access to health: Interview with Mary Robinson
Krebs V: Geneva Health Forum, 3 September 2006
Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and more recently United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002) shared with the conference team some of the main challenges at hand when it comes to access to health for all: accountability, financing, the brain drain and the responsibility of those who have the means to make a difference, such as the private sector. She pointed out that the high turnout at the Forum was an indicator of the need for it and the urgency of discussing access to health. Access for all is the concern of all.
Health disparities and the body politic: A series of international symposia
Harvard School of Public Health
What we today term "health disparities" launched the modern public health movement in the nineteenth century. Yet only in the past two decades have governments begun to focus explicitly on the deep-rooted social determinants of health and disease. What are governments' responsibilities to reduce these disparities? The last of the three symposia included input from a southern African country in examining how official statistics can shed light on modern health inequities.
People's Health Movement: One year after the Cuenca Declaration
People\'s Health Movement Global Secretariat, 22 August 2006
PHM has released its yearly update one year after PHA II, held in Ecuador a year ago where the Cuenca Declaration was approved unanimously by 1,400 participants. This update discusses progress in the five year plan adopted in the Cuenca Declaration.