Press Release: WHO’s Bangkok Charter a big disappointment, says PHM!

Bangkok, 18 August 2005

The Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion, adopted at the recently concluded 6th International Conference on Health Promotion, is an inadequate and timid document that falls far short of what is required to tackle global health problems today.

The Conference was organized by the World Health Organisation and Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health and was attended by 700 leading health promotion experts from more than 100 countries around the world.

The People’s Health Movement (PHM), an international civil society network of health professionals, academics and non-government organizations, is dismayed and disappointed by the Charter and by the failure of WHO to take the opportunity to offer leadership on a progressive agenda to improve the health of the global poor.

.

“Although we support the aims of the Charter and its call for “political action and sustained advocacy” to promote health, the Charter fails to highlight the current regime of global economic governance as a primary cause of increased poverty, widening income inequalities and poor health” said David McCoy, a researcher associated with PHM.

“It also avoids identifying the political barriers to health for all and consequently offers little in the form of bold or concrete recommendations to advance this agenda” he said.

The failure to provide a robust critique of the causes of global poverty and failing health systems, results in the Charter omitting any reference to the negative social and health impacts of neo-liberal public policy, or the exploitation of natural and human resources by the corporate sector and the wealthy global minority or to the rapidly increasing concentration of wealth.

While the Bangkok Charter echoes previous declarations that health is a human right, it has not grasped the opportunity to call for human and health rights to take precedence over the provisions of economic policy and trade and financial agreements. This Charter does not even call for the routine implementation of equity-focused health impact assessments of trade agreements – an omission that is grave and an issue that WHO must not be allowed to ignore.

There are many concrete strategies that the global public health community should be advocating, but which are neglected in this  Charter. These include:

• Ø      Further cancellations of unsustainable and unjustified debt
• Ø      The end of economic conditionalities on debt cancellation, development assistance or loans/grants from international financial institutions and other development banks
• Ø      The democratic reform of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
• Ø      The establishment of a fair international tax regime to eradicate unacceptable transnational tax avoidance
• Ø      Promotion of appropriate global redistribution and the public financing for essential services to all citizens
• Ø      The renegotiation or even scrapping of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements that have negative impact on public health
• Ø      The adoption of an agenda to repair and develop the capacity of public sector health systems in all countries particularly developing nations
• Ø      Ratification of the United Nations Convention on Corruption to reduce the negative health effects of bribery and other forms of illegal and unethical practices involving multinational corporations and governments.

Unless the global public health community is serious about identifying, naming and tackling the underlying political barriers and vested interests that lie in the way of health promotion, we run the risk of changing little.

It is vital that WHO, as the lead multi-lateral agency for the promotion of health, takes a more constructive and independent position with respect to the political and economic actors and institutions that retard the promotion of health. It is no longer enough to merely promote well-meaning declarations that lack any meaningful equity-based strategies to improve health.

For further media enquiries,

Contact:  

+91 98450 91319

Satya Sivaraman -   satyasagar@yahoo.com or

Dr Unnikrishanan PV – unnikru@yahoo.com 

      Read on

Related Documents

1. Submission from PHM on the Fifth Draft, 24 June 2005 of the Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion

2.NGO Coalitions for Global Health Promotion: PHM presentation at the 6th Global Conference on Health Promotion (doc)

3.Draft Bangkok Charter for Health Promotion: draft version 6, from 29 July 2005 (pdf)