Need to take battle for health to global level
Addressing the plenary session, Heywood who is also Executive Director of SECTION27, showed shocking photographs of toilets at Limpopo schools – some inside ramshackle corrugated iron sheds, some without doors and most blocked and overflowing with faeces.
‘I have set myself a challenge that the next time I attend a People’s Health Assembly, I will be able to tell you those toilets are gone. We are almost 20 years into South Africa’s democracy with a fabulous Constitution, yet our public education system is failing millions of young, Black people every minute,’ said Heywood. Poor sanitation is one of the determinants of poor health.
He said that across the world there was a growing recognition of the right to health, but that there was no definition of the duties that flow from this right. ‘This means that there has really been no change in the approach to health, which means we need a global campaign for a Global Constitution on the Right to Health,’ said Heywood.
‘There has been no change to the governance of health and the budgets for health have not been increasing, there has been no change in the management of health and the delivery of health services has not changed with nobody systematically and independently monitoring health systems.
‘We need to urgently clarify with much greater precision was it means if health is a right,’ said Heywood. ‘Health can no longer be regarded as a commodity.’
He said this meant:
– Making available the best (maximum) health services according to resources, not the minimum;
– Making these health services available to all people, not only the poor so it is not viewed as a charity;
– A redistribution of services between States without it being viewed as charity or foreign aid.
‘We need to move beyond the recognition of health as a right to demanding its implementation,’ he added.
Heywood, one of the founding members of the Treatment Action Campaign, said there was much that can be learnt from the HIV/AIDS movement. He said the success in fighting for medicine lead to the necessary fight for the improvement of health and health systems and in turn a need and demand for accountability and genuine democracy.
He said that health had been globalised and that the fight had to be escalated to a global level where bodies such as the United Nations had to get involved in the battle.
The PHA, which started last Friday, has seen close to a thousand social activists, health workers, researchers and government officials from 90 countries meet.
Organised by the People’s Health Movement, the PHA is addressing issues that impact fundamentally on the health and wellbeing of the world’s population and will culminate today (SUBS WED) in a Cape Town Call to Action and a protest march in the city.
Protestors will rally against the legal case by the drug company Novartis against the government of India. The outcome of the case will have far-reaching impacts and activists from India and South Africa speaking at the rally will explain how and why the Novartis case is crucial and what it means for patients in India and internationally who depend on affordable drug supply.
Ever since India refused to grant a patent to Novartis for a cancer drug more than six years ago, the company has been seeking to weaken the core part of India’s patent law, the basis for the patent being rejected in the first place.
The drug, branded as Gleevec or Glivec, was rejected under ‘Section 3(d)’ of the country’s patent law, which requires new drugs to show improved therapeutic efficacy over existing ones in order to deserve a patent. This provision complies with international trade rules and is specifically designed to prevent pharmaceutical companies from abusively extending their patent monopolies for making obvious improvements to existing drugs. Novartis has taken the Indian government to court over this provision; final hearing is scheduled at the Indian Supreme Court on August 22.
A victory for Novartis will have a chilling impact on Indian-made generic pharmaceuticals. India is considered the ‘pharmacy of the developing world’ because of the steady supply of generics that comes from the country ‘ 80% of all anti-retrovirals used in Africa are Indian generics. In addition to stemming future generic production of key drugs, the court case could set a negative precedent for other countries, such as South Africa, on how to determine the grounds upon which to give patents, and to balance public health with the protection of intellectual property.
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