Report
on the International Session held on Oct. 11, 2024 in Ancona (Italy) at the
“G7 Health: not on my body” Campaign, Ancona (Italy) Oct. 9-11, 2024
On Friday Oct. 11, 2024, an International Session on “Public Healthcare under commercialisation pressures: critical international perspectives” was held at Cinema Azzurro in Ancona (Italy) organized by the European Network “Health is not for sale”. The session was part of the three-day initiatives organized by the Campaign “G7 Health: not on my body” to oppose the (contents of the) meeting of the G7 health ministries on 9-11 there. The 90’ session, hosted during the General Assembly on the last day of the campaign, was based on both oral and video presentations. After the welcome by the Campaign’s organizers, a member of the European Nework, Maurizio Manno, introduced the session and presented briefly the rationale and the ambitious aim of the event, i.e. to assess the current situation concerning the accessibility to and the quality of healthcare and public health services at a global level, by comparing different situations in various parts of the world.
The first oral presentation, by Yves Hellendorff, the speaker of the European Network “Health is not for sale”, after presenting briefly the history of the Nework, discussed the seven point platform presented by the European Network at the press conference at the European Parliament on 8 April 2024 in Bruxelles as part of the campaign “Health before the Market… Let’s change Europe!”. The seven points upon which the urgent attention of Europe was requested are the following:
- an adequate financial support to healthcare to ensure quality and good working conditions to the health personnel
- to protect people and workers against risks from commercialization
- economic, geographic, cultural and temporal accessibility for all persons
- to ensure sanitary democracy by involving people and health personnel
- to consider all the determinants of health: social, environmental and gender
- a policy on medicines for the people and the South of the world, not for BigPharma
- an adequate recruitment of health personnel while protecting the more fragile countries from additional sanitary deprivation
The second speaker was Ramon Vila, a leading activist from France, reporting on the critical situation of healthcare and public health in his country.
Beside the oral presentations six videos were shown, produced for this purpose by a number of national and international organizations wellknown for being committed to the promotion and defence of healthcare as a fundamental right for all (PHM and PHM-India, PSI, EFPC, Marea Blanca, Medicina Democratica, COVESAP). The videos made clear the increasing difficulties or even impossibility for the citizens of many EU countries (Spain, France, Croatia, Italy) and, even more, other regions of the world (India) to have proper access to healthcare and public health services. (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LukGD4fkVnYfJGWVT1UD422ctNSX9mzd?usp=sharing)
Overwelming evidence was brought to the audience at the session, indicating the increasing effects of neoliberism on health policies in the past ten or twenty years globally. The reasons for the decline in healthcare quality and quantity have emerged clearly from both the oral and the video presentations. The factual analysis of the data presented at the international session confirmed precisely the very hypothesis that the European Network had put forward when planning the session, which was the following.
“Political instability, economic and social deprivation, constitutive weakness or progressive decline of public healthcare infrastructures are important causes in some countries. Low investments, poor compensation and motivation of the sanitary personnel, incompetence or private interest in short or long term healthcare and public health management are more relevant in others. Free-market health policies, particularly those for medicines, as shown in the recent Covid-19 pandemic, proved to be inadequate or even unable, if not accomplice, to cope with the emergency situation. Recently, the effects of the World Bank strategies on low-income countries and the results of the EU austerity on the European member states during the 2008 economic crisis, are probably the main factors, leading to heavy cuts and commercialization of health services, resulting in the current, ever increasing privatization of structures and personnel. The aim, indeed, of a private health system, not service, is constitutively to achieve economic profit, while the aim of a public health service, not system, is or should be to provide free healthcare to the entire population. All these factors have created a vicious circle which increases inequalities and inefficiency in healthcare worldwide. In both low and medium-income countries people are limited in their access to healthcare due to economical constrains.”
The continuous process of health commercialization is progressively invading all sectors of healthcare and public health services, with literally devastating effects, in some cases, on the quality of life and the lifespan of patients, as reported dramatically by the video of PHM-India, showing that during the Covid pandemic millions of individuals were brought to indigence after paying the bills of private hospitals.
After the videos, the floor was given to a representative of Sanitari per Gaza (SpG: Health Workers for Gaza, HW4G), the Italian network spontaneously born early this year among health personnel in protest against the shameful, systematic attach to the hospitals and the health workers in Gaza by the Israeli army for over a year now. Luisa Magnone, the speaker for SpG at the session, highlighted the right-duty, according to the Hippocrates’ Oath, of all health workers to cure all patients, independent form their race, religion, nationality, social status and political ideology. Luisa also asked with strength for an immediate and permanent ceasfire and the permission for the International Community to provide the much need humanitarian aid for the exhausted population of Gaza. SpG asked that these requests be included in the Session’s agenda and final Declaration.
Indeed, at the end of the session the Proposal for a formal nine-point Declaration (called the “2024 Ancona Declaration”), after having been published in a draft form on the Campaign web site for a few days before the session, was approved by the General Assembly to be made available, for further comments/suggestions, to the international Community and the organizations, associations and individuals involved in and committed to the defence of healthcare and public health as a fundamental right for all (https://nog7ancona.noblogs.org/post/2024/10/08/proposta-per-la-dichiarazione-di-ancona-2024-rete-europea-la-salute-non-e-in-vendita/). The international session was ment to be the start and the Declaration was just the base for a new international campaign 2024-2030 “Healthcare and public Health for All” (HPHA). The European Network will take care to promote the diffusion of the 2024 Ancona Declaration with all available means and to all national and international stakeholders including the European Union, the United Nations and the WHO.
Finally, on Saturday Oct. 12, 2024, a formal meeting of the European Network was hosted by the Ambasciata dei Diritti (Embassy of the Rights) in Ancona, to discuss and plan the future initiatives of the Network, both autonomously and in collaboration with other organizations participating in the session.
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