Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Arena Magazine

Preventing the privatisation of WHO.

Article Excerpt
The World Health Organisation's Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 argued that public health was as much a social-political enterprise as a clinical one. Through the WHO, the Declaration was also linked to the United Nations' basic mandate, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thus universal access to primary health care became a nonnegotiable basic human right. In 2000 it formed the rationale for the inspired Health for All Campaign, led by Halfdan Mahler.

I have worked as a doctor in public health in the Third World for just over half a century. When Mahler retired as the Director General of WHO in 1988, I quickly noticed a change and since then have documented the widening of the health equity gap between First and Third Worlds.

As First World corporate interests moved into Third World countries to develop infrastructures useful...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!