ISLAMABAD, July 7: The Pakistan chapter of People's Health Movement (PHM) was launched here on Wednesday to influence the policy-makers to extend health-care facilities in a cost- affective manner, especially to women.
The movement was launched in a seminar on "Public health challenges and health policy response in South Asia," which was attended by a large number of doctors, government officials and civil society activists.
The PHM started from Bangladesh in December 2000 when 1,453 participants from 76 countries met for the first people's health assembly. The movement here was launched by an NGO, The Network for Consumer Protection, in presence of Indian health rights activists Dr Ravi Narayan, a professor of community medicine- turned health activist presently global coordinator of the PHA and neurosurgeon Dr B. Ekbal, convener of Indian PHM.
They spoke on the Kerala health initiative, which despite low economic indicators managed to provide a chain of good health services because of high human development ratio. Dr Ekbal said Kerala was being considered as a success model of public and primary health-care system because it had made development in all sectors.
In 2001, Kerala ranked first in the human development index with women outnumbering men (1,058 women per 1000 men) and a literacy rate of 91 per cent with women having the equal ratio. Life expectancy at birth, he added, was 73 as compared to 61 for India as a whole.
Dr Ravi Narayan said the message of the movement was that people were now taking their health-care in their own hands. Earlier, Dr Abdul Majeed Rajput, in-charge national health policy unit of the ministry of health, said the government was taking a number of steps to take health as a developmental issue and had incorporated health for all in strategies like poverty reduction strategy to provide health to all.
Executive coordinator of the NGO, Dr Zafar Mirza, said PHM was the reincarnation of the principles of primary health-care and health for all, the goals set by Almaty conference of WHO in 1978. He appreciated the government's decision to increase the health budget from 0.7 per cent of GDP to the 0.9 per cent, adding that still much more was needed.
