CORRPORATE RULE AS A THREAT TO WORLD HEALTH

CORPORATE RULE AS A THREAT TO WORLD HEALTH
Dr. R.S. Dahiya

The medical fraternity and the people at large are on cross roads that what has happened to the health of people at large? The people have lost faith in the medical profession. to improve the relationship of people at large with medical profession and their health, for the last 10-15 years many prescriptions like selective Primary Health Care, Structural Adjustment Programme, World Bank’s take over of the Third World Health Policy and the McDonalization of WHO and UNICEF have been advocated. In reality all these steps are in a way assaults on Primary Health care as conceived in Alma Ata and are manifestations of the dominant “free market” paradigm of development. As undemocratic as it is unsustainable, it promotes economic growth of the rich regardless of the human and environmental cost.

The present model of economic development is dependent on ‘market system’ and is very much dangerous to health. It is quite evident when we consider the impact of its biggest industries. In economic terms, the World’s three biggest industries are :
1) Military/ arms
2) Illicit Drugs
3) Oil.
All three of these biggest Industries are posing far reaching daggers to the sustainable well being of humanity and the planet as such.

These big industries or the corporate sector puts lot of money in elections of different countries and the people, who get elected with their support to these public offices, undermine democratic process. This impedes humanity from taking decisive steps to rein in the biggest emerging global human threats to human health, such as global warming, the pending third world war, the deepening poverty of one third of humanity, the global pandemic of crime and violence and the disempowerment that leads to terrorism.

Rather than confronting the underlying causes of these globalised threats to health, the world chieftains- with their ties to the arms, drugs and oil industries use the current crises as a pretext to systematic role back of civil liberties and rights, public services and rein in on corporate greed. Ultimately, the health as a whole and especially of the last person in afar off place either in a remote village or slum area of a city is affected very adversely. The whole responsibility gets shifted to the medical professionals or paramedics who are working in that area. Today the people and the health services personnel are accusing each other for the ill health of the majority of the people. This is not true. The real culprits are these three corporate sector big industries and their greed, the govts. Of the states who succumb to the manipulations of these big industries and the people themselves who do not struggle against this misconception.

In sum, far from progressing towards health for all, humanity may currently be on a collision course towards Health for No One. It is time to collectively wake up and change course.