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Home > 2007 > May

People’s Health Movement activities at the US Social Forum

US Social Forum June 27 – July 1, 2007 Atlanta, GA

As members of the People’s Health Movement (PHM), Hesperian staff have been very involved in helping to organize Health Justice activities at the upcoming US Social Forum. We have been taking advantage of the opportunity to build greater unity of vision and strategy among US health and health care organizations by jointly planning exciting events on health justice in the US. We urge you to attend any or all of these workshops:

“Promoting Health for All,” an International People’s Health University will be offered from June 27-30 in conjunction with the US Social Forum. Each day of the IPHU will include two hours of presentations by US and international health activists and academics, followed by two hours of discussion and activities. Afternoons and evenings are free for exploring the hundreds of workshops and presentations at the US Social Forum and networking with other leaders and activists.

Topics include:

  • Healthcare as a human right—not a commodity to be bought or sold
  • Socio-economic, racial, and gender inequalities as barriers to health and healthcare within the United States
  • Connections between health, trade, agriculture, and war
  • The global movement for equal access to health and healthcare
  • Practical skills for transforming knowledge into action on health issues

See details and application form.

USSF Workshops and panels PHM has organized or contributed to:
2838 Defending Our Water and Protecting Our Food: Bringing Family Farmers and Water Rights Advocates Together
2841 Our Bodies, Our Water: Our Right to Safe Water and Health
3005 A human rights approach to health advocacy and activism
3177 Health for All: a peoples vision for health and justice
3419 Access to essential medicines advocating locally and globally
3916 What Is Social Medicine?
840 A Peoples Healthcare Truth Hearing
See all the sessions submitted.

Other activities:
Wed., June 27th – Health activists and organizations march together in the opening ceremony.
Thurs., June 28th – Health and Healthcare Day in the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign tent
Fri., June 29th, 3pm – “March for Our Lives” to CocaCola headquarters for the Right to Water
Ongoing – Work with the HealthCare NOW coalition to take testimonies from people affected by lack of health care, and in favor of HR 676 (the Medicare For All bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers). Volunteers are also needed for petition signature gathering for HR676.

Let us know if you are planning to attend or if you would like to help
(contact Zena at [email protected])

See you there!

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Update from Puerto Rico

It's been one month since Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico, yet much of the island is still without basic necessities. People are struggling to cope without clean water, passable roads, electricity, medicines and other supplies. Amidst this backdrop, stories of residents' and aid workers creative efforts are beginning to emerge.

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Working with flood victims? We can help.

This summer we have seen devastating floods around the world, in record numbers. Nearly 41 million people have been affected by flooding since June, in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. The immediate destruction of these floods have already caused the death of thousands of people from injury, drowning and electrocution.

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Join Hesperian for a conversation with Dr. Julie Cliff

Please join Hesperian and Dr. Julie Cliff for a wide-ranging conversation about health in Mozambique on Wednesday, September 27th at 6:30pm. Dr.Cliff has lived and worked in Mozambique for over 40 years, leading the epidemiology department at the Ministry of Health and the infectious diseases unit at Maputo Central Hospital, Mozambique's primary teaching hospital.

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Read, teach, repeat

Tomorrow's Stars provides scholarships, libraries, and other support for students in Elmina, Ghana who face significant barriers to completing their education. To augment classroom learning with lessons on life skills, volunteer Sue Ron Gonzalez helped form a girls club in the rural farming village Abrem Essiam. After searching for practical and empowering information to share with the girls, she finally found Health Actions for Women at a gathering in San Francisco with Sarah Shannon, Hesperian's Executive Director.

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Four years later

Four years ago the world watched as 1,134 people lost their lives in the deadly Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. In the wake of the disaster, 200 brand name clothing retailers responded to public pressure by signing on to the more effective Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety and the less effective Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Both agreements bound the participating retailers to fund safety inspections and improvements at the Bangladeshi factories that supply them with product.

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Your suitcase isn’t ready til you’ve packed these

The influence of policies created by the United States and Canada is strongly felt in Honduras, magnifying poverty, inequality, insecurity, and violence in the country. In response to this interference, organizations from the US and Canada have formed the Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) to support Honduran activists and community leaders in their commitment to further social justice.

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Training programs use Where There Is No Doctor

We receive stories from people around the world who use Where There Is No Doctor and Hesperian's other titles in their training and primary health care programs. Health workers appreciate the books' approach to sensitive or "taboo" issues, the clearly-written information their patients or trainees can understand, and the adaptable, practical solutions to a variety of health problems.

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What Filipino Women Want

Information on women's health, and especially family planning, can be difficult to find in the Philippines due to governmental and religious opposition. But access will soon become easier when Hesperian Health Guides releases Where Women Have No Doctor in Filipino on the HealthWiki. Together with our Philippine partner Likhaan, this edition is being updated to reflect current information on a range of women's health issues and produced for online viewing.

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War Kills in More Ways than One

The war in Yemen that has already killed thousands through bombing and starvation is now killing thousands more with one of the worst cholera outbreaks on record, over 300,000 reported cases. South Sudan, already struggling with fighting among armed factions and the threat of famine is now also facing a cholera outbreak.

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Shining a light on women’s health

Recently, we lost Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor who became a French politician and advocate for women's health. Veil's message was that women forced into a corner by laws and social pressures are left with dangerous health choices, neglecting their safety or trusting the wrong people, and ultimately risking their lives.

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When a bug bite isn’t just a bug bite

After last year's frightening Zika outbreak, it comes as welcome news that reports of new cases have slowed down in areas of Brazil and the Caribbean. While cases in Florida also seem to be reducing, the CDC recently reported a larger breadth of the Zika-carrying mosquito in the south than previously known.

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Preparing students for success

Every year a new group of nursing students from the Boston College Connell School of Nursing Global Health Initiative travel to Central America equipped with the clinical knowledge they learned from their textbooks and a copy of Donde no hay doctor (Spanish edition of Where There Is No Doctor). Ronna E. Krozy, EdD, RN, who has led the program since 1991, first to Ecuador and since 2005 to Nicaragua, has found Where There Is No Doctor to be the most important resource her students have.

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