HEALTH: Thrashing Out a Non-Aligned Strategy for 21st Century

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 24 1998 (IPS) - Health ministers from Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations are meeting in Cuba this week to come up with a common stance towards the reforms of the health sector needed on the threshold of the new century.

The impact of globalisation on the health of the poorest countries and groups will be the focus of debate among the representatives of the more than 60 NAM member nations – of a total of 113 – meeting here Thursday and Friday.

The non-aligned nations could come out in favour of reforms that, without ruling out privatisation, would not reduce the role of the state, for the sake of guaranteeing total health coverage with an emphasis on the most vulnerable sectors, according to the meeting’s preparatory documents, to which IPS had access.

The final declaration is expected to be “brief and action- oriented,” the Cuban Public Health Ministry’s director of foreign relations, Enrique Comendeiro, told a media briefing.

Colombian president Ernesto Samper will inaugurate the two-day meeting as current president of NAM. Samper reached Havana Wednesday on an official visit to Cuba to run through Saturday. As well as participating in the NAM meeting, he will meet in an official capacity with President Fidel Castro.

Given the top priority the Cuban government sets on health, Castro is expected to address the opening session of the ministerial gathering. The director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Hiroshi Nakajima, and Cuban Public Health Minister Carlos Dotres will also speak at the inaugural session, the only part of the conference expected to be open to the press.

This week’s meeting is the first time that the health ministers of NAM members meet outside of the framework of the WHO annual assembly.

They have come together in response to a call issued by the president of the movement in May. For nearly three years, Colombia has tried to ward off a confrontation between NAM and rich countries. But the North-South divide was made patent by a non- aligned resolution presented at the World Health Assembly on May 16.

The declaration said the globalisation of the economy had led to the adoption of market mechanisms in health systems which, in certain circumstances, had affected the provision of health services and interfered in the ability of developing countries to adopt appropriate routes of action.

At the WHO assembly, 51 nations voted in favour of the resolution, and 36 – headed by the United States, Great Britain and Australia – voted against. Four countries, including Japan, abstained.

“Non-aligned countries are in a unique position to lead the developing world in managing and regulating the current trend towards privatisation and globalisation in health services,” WHO deputy director-general Fernando Antezana told NAM health ministers in Geneva at that time.

By speaking in the name of the director-general of WHO, Antezana ensured that developing countries and NAM members would speak out loud on the important role played by health in development.

At the May assembly, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of WHO, Castro pointed out that universal access to basic health services would cost 25 billion dollars, a mere three percent of the 800 billion that currently went to defence spending worldwide.

Industrialised nations, home to 824 million people or 14.6 percent of the world’s population, consume 82 percent of all medicine, he added.

This week’s meeting in Havana must decide how NAM countries are to react to the effects of free trade and the growing privatisation of health services, a challenge which Comendeiro said was of common concern to all.

The ministers will discuss reforms of health systems, the objectives of Health for All, and South-South cooperation. The key theme of the meeting will be the problem of equity, according to the meeting’s organisers.