Resources and Learning Centre

In order for us truly to appreciate the meaning of 'war on want' or 'making hunger history', we must revisit some prominent principles in the 'human rights act' as it is sometimes known, specifically the preamble which states: "freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people". Article 25:1 declares: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." To the measure that a government is willing, or indeed able to make true provision for these tenets to their populace, is the measure that equity and true social conscience has operational freedom, and the Human Rights Declaration is being respected or upheld.

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948

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The International Conference on Primary Health Care, which met in Alma-Ata, Russia in 1978, expressed the need for urgent action by all governments, all health and development workers, and the world community to protect and promote the health of all the people of the world. Declaration 7:3 cites "promotion of food supply and proper nutrition; an adequate supply of safe water and basic sanitation; maternal and child health care, including family planning; immunization against the major infectious diseases; prevention and control of locally endemic diseases; appropriate treatment of common diseases and injuries; and provision of essential drugs" is a fundamental component of Primary Health Care.

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The Declaration of Alma Ata 1978

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Child mortality is a sensitive indicator of a country’s development and telling evidence of its priorities and values. Investing in the health of children and their mothers is not only a human rights imperative, it is a sound economic decision and one of the surest ways for a country to set its course towards a better future.....Read the 2008 UNICEF Report

The World Health Report 2008 revisits the ambitious vision of primary health care as a set of values and principles for guiding the development of health systems. The Report represents an important opportunity to draw on the lessons of the past, consider the challenges that Wh cle W m tow hensive h day W ix Director-General’s Message lie ahead, and identify major avenues for health systems to narrow the intolerable gaps between aspiration and implementation. These avenues are defi ned in the Report as four sets of reforms that refl ect a convergence between the values of primary health care, the expectations of citizens and the common health performance challenges that cut across all contexts. They include:
• universal coverage reforms that ensure that health systems contribute to health equity, social justice and the end of exclusion, primarily by moving towards universal access and social health protection;
• service delivery reforms that re-organize health services around people’s needs and expectations, so as to make them more socially relevant and more responsive to the changing world, while producing better outcomes;

• public policy reforms that secure healthier communities, by integrating public health actions with primary care, by pursuing healthy public policies across sectors and by strengthening national and transnational public health interventions; and
• leadership reforms that replace disproportionate reliance on command and control on one hand, and laissez-faire disengagement of the state on the other, by the inclusive, participatory, negotiation-based leadership indicated by the complexity of contemporary health systems.

>> Download the 2008 WHO World Health Report here <<

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The effect that increased droughts, extreme weather events, tropical storms and sea level rises will have on large parts of Africa, on many small island states and coastal zones will be infl icted in our lifetimes. In terms of aggregate world GDP, these short term eff ects may not be large. But for some of the world’s poorest people, the consequences could be apocalyptic. In the long run climate change is a massive threat to human development and in some places it is already undermining the international community’s efforts to reduce extreme poverty.

>> Download the 2008 Human Development Report here <<

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