Organizing Across Borders for Health and Health Care

The People's Health Movement (PHM) came together in 2000 at its first assembly in Bangladesh to reinvigorate the call for Health for All and Primary Health Care. Eight years later, the movement has expanded and is a key advocacy platform proposing comprehensive global health development and justice. In 2005, after the Second People's Health Assembly in Ecuador a global campaign for the right to health and health care was initiated.

In this presentation, the authors will highlight key efforts underway in the different national campaigns including those in: India, Uruguay, Ecuador, Guatemala, Benin, South Africa, Egypt, and Congo. Preliminary results from campaigns in Asia and the US that are to begin in 2008 will also be presented. Each country that is involved in the global campaign has used the same assessment tool based on human rights standards, but the participating organizations and the priority topics that each national effort has selected are distinct. Priority topics include: privatization and deterioration of national health systems, community participation, health disparities, HIV/AIDS.

The People's Health Movement overall, and the Right to Health and Health Care Campaign, specifically, have a unique organizing structure. Academics, practitioners, and activists, from a broad cross-section of global society and working on different levels come together periodically to analyze how their particular struggles for health fit into the larger global health context. Lessons learned from the first 24 months of the campaign, and the challenges and benefits of PHM's innovative organizational structure will be presented.