CUENCA, Ecuador, Jul 21 (IPS) - Alternative reports on global health, presented at the second People's Health Assembly in Ecuador this week, question the free-market, neoliberal economic model and view it as the cause of many of the health problems facing humanity today. These include the indiscriminate use of toxic products in agriculture, pollution caused by the oil industry, the consumption of transgenic crops, the destruction of the urban environment by pollution, and the commercialisation of health services. The reports by the Global Health Watch and the Observatorio Latinoamericano de Salud see a healthy life as a fundamental human right, the enjoyment of which depends on economic, political and social factors. The Global Health Watch is a broad collaboration of public health experts, non-governmental organisations, civil society activists, community groups, health workers and academics. Mexican academic Laura Juárez Sánchez, who took part in drawing up the reports, said that by generating increasing unemployment, poverty and rural migration, the ”capitalist economic model” is the main cause of the return of illnesses that had been basically eradicated and of deaths from easily curable ailments. Juárez Sánchez pointed to the reappearance of cholera and deaths of people from scabies, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, tonsillitis and pneumonia. These illnesses are expanding as a result of ”malnutrition and the lack of access to and deterioration of basic social services like health care, education and housing,” said Juárez Sánchez, a researcher at the Universidad Obrera, a Mexican university. ”Rural and urban families are forced to live in overcrowded conditions without piped water or plumbing, to share collective bathrooms, and to live under roofs of corrugated iron or cardboard,” she said. Alex Zapata, who wrote the chapter of the Global Health Watch report - also known as the Alternative World Health Report - that deals with the ”mercantilisation” of water, said ”capitalist globalisation” has led to the privatisation of sewage and water services. That means water is becoming a marketable commodity or merchandise to which only those who can afford it have access, which will have a negative impact on the public health of a large part of the global population, he said. The reports were presented Wednesday at the Jul. 17-23 second People's Health Assembly in the city of Cuenca in southern Ecuador. Biologist Elizabeth Bravo of Ecuador, who provided information on the effects of transgenic food crops, said the introduction of genetically modified seeds is giving certain transnational corporations control over food production worldwide, ”as is already occurring in the case of soy beans.” ”The global market for transgenic soy is the monopoly of a single company, the U.S.-based Monsanto, which sells seeds that are resistant to its Roundup herbicide,” she said. ”The (Roundup Ready) seeds are not more productive,” said Bravo. ”The only thing they do is make farmers dependent on a weed control model based on intensive use of an herbicide.” According to the biologist, the expansion of transgenic crops, besides creating dependency, promotes monoculture farming with the subsequent decline of essential food crops and the loss of diversity and food sovereignty. Bravo also said the effects of transgenic crops are extremely negative for the poor rural population, which in turn has repercussions on public health. ”The expansion of soy in Argentina has displaced other crops like rice, corn, sunflowers and wheat, and has pushed other farming activities into marginal areas. Since 1988, the number of farms has shrunk by 24.5 percent, with the disappearance of 103,400 family farms. ”Thousands and thousands of families migrate from the countryside to urban slums every year,” said the biologist. Bravo admitted that more research is needed into the health effects on humans of transgenic foods, but stressed that studies have found negative consequences for animals living near fields where genetically modified crops are grown.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29594

Due to globalisation more and more people are moving from the countryside to the urban cities in search for more jobs, this therefore resulted in overcrowding and the declining of public health, for example clean water would only be avaliable for those who could afford it.

Globalisation also promotes monoculture farming and increased usage of pesticides which damages the environment.
Increasing intensification and monocultural approaches to farming have resulted in amalgamation of holdings and an increase in field size. In the traditional arable areas many pasture fields are being converted to arable cropping, but in the traditional livestock areas the reverse is happening with a move away from arable enterprises and mixed farming, which is proving damaging to the flora and fauna. In places new enterprises, such as outdoor pig rearing or free range poultry, have introduced non-pastoral forms of land management and posed planning problems, e.g. where larger buildings are needed to house extensive poultry enterprises.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/erdp/docs/swchapter/section12/summary.htm

~Liewxun

6:28 AM

Article:
“Globalisation has led to increased environmental threats; the marginalisation of local communities; increased migration; urbanisation; land use patterns which affect the soil, deforestation, monoculture, soil depletion, and loss of biodiversity; pollution of the seas and farmlands from chemicalised agriculture; resource depletion; malnutrition; and the curative emphasis in health care and public health with increased reliance on technologies like drugs, vaccines, and chemicals. Integration of markets has resulted in new products and new lifestyles especially toxic products like tobacco, alcohol, contaminated foods, junk foods, dangerous medicines, the trafficking in drugs, organ trade, antipersonal landmines, light weapons, pornographic materials and the like. These developments have far reaching implications on the spread of disease and public health.

Clearly the effects of the global economy have been devastating for societies everywhere… Poverty has increased and the gap between the rich and poor have widened; unemployment is a fact of life; communities have disintegrated; traditional family structures have broken down, there is more homelessness and destitution, violence in all forms is escalating; environmental problems and diseases are beyond control.

Increasingly peoples have come to recognize that this system is not working; where people are devalued and life has no social meaning; where institutions are given unbridled powers to facilitate corporations to accumulate and concentrate wealth and immiserate the lives of the majority. They are reacting against this system demanding changes and seeking alternatives: that foster justice and equity; happiness and fulfillment; promote ecological principles, values of cooperation, community, love, caring, and respect for life and diversity.

Many citizen groups and individuals are now working together in various networks and coalitions to bring about change at different levels.”
- http://www.phmovement.org/pubs/issuepapers/hong23.html

Reflections:
Although there have been global level initiatives such as a full review of the WTO agreements and their impact on social, environmental and health policies to help combat problems caused by globalization, it seems that they have been relatively futile and that globalization continues to have a negative impact on human health, both mental and physical.

As mentioned in the article, “increased migration, urbanization, land use patterns which affect the soil, deforestation, monoculture, soil depletion, and loss of biodiversity, pollution of the seas and farmlands from chemical agriculture; resource depletion, malnutrition, and the curative emphasis in health care and public health with increased reliance on technologies like drugs, vaccines, and chemicals” have resulted from globalization, mainly through industrialization. Activities such as land use patterns which affect the soil, deforestation, and soil depletion, loss of biodiversity, pollution and resource depletion have a direct negative impact on the environment and a secondary impact on human health. For example, too much air or noise pollution may severely and irreversibly damage a person’s hearing and toxic chemical air pollution can also cause blindness. Water pollution can inflict many diseases, for instance by promoting mosquito breeding, such as malaria and dengue or may even result in death upon direct consumption or use, especially in rural third world countries. Furthermore, to combat there diseases new drugs and vaccines are brought into the country which are often misused.

Products like “tobacco, alcohol, dangerous medicines and drugs, light weapons, pornographic materials and the like” are also smuggled into the country with the same excuse. Things like these not only affect people’s physical health, with addiction to tobacco causing many different types of cancer, alcohol sometimes resulting in fatal drunk driving, and similarly addiction to other drugs may be harmful, but they also have a negative impact on a persons mental health, such as addiction to pornographic materials posted on the web and stress from unemployment due to the tremendous competition in the work industry.

Human health is really at stake when it comes to globalization. In fact, expansion of global cigarette exports is a dramatic example, totaling 223 billion cigarettes in 1975 and rising to 1.1 trillion cigarettes in 1996 (a 5-fold increase)! Other adverse health effects include the health of child laborers in third world countries such as Pakistan (who produce many of the disposable surgical instruments that are increasingly used in US hospitals). These children have poor living and working conditions and low pays as their bosses are only concerned with their profits and are thus highly susceptible to diseases and deteriorating health.

Every year globalization causes many deaths. In fact it is responsible for perhaps 14 to 18 million deaths a year (18% of total deaths) worldwide, which includes deaths from toxic exposures in poor countries as US corporations evade environmental restraints at home. One such example occurred 15 years ago in Bhopal, India, where 5 tons of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked into the air from a Union Carbide pesticide plant, killing more than 3,000 people.

As mentioned in the article, globalization increases income gaps between the rich and the poor. Researches have shown that population health in rich countries is determined primarily by the size of the gap between rich and poor. The United States has the greatest wealth and income gap of any rich country, which is the main explanation for its dismal health ranking among developed countries (where it came 25th, behind all rich countries and even some poor countries).

Another reason behind this is that globalization also gives rise to advancements in technology, with technology being shared worldwide in today’s borderless world. Increased convenience in human life due to the technology available is demanding a lot more from man today. With a lot more work on mind many people tend to ignore important activities such as exercise and having proper healthy meals which are very important for their health. This is also why many rich countries, the US for example, face severely high obesity rates, with a huge number of people undergoing surgery for it each year.

All this just goes to show how globalization has yet again let us down in another one of its aspects because health is probably the most important human ‘possession’ and globalization is deteriorating even that.

-Sadia-

Biblio:
http://members.aol.com/tiermensch/pollutionhearing.html
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1070886
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/28/059.html
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/122702_globalization.cfm
http://www.pcdf.org/1996/16korten.htm
http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3783/3924/33225.aspx
http://www.globalizationandhealth.com/content/2/1/11

2:19 AM

The world is speeding up

Read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6614637.stm

Summary: Recent studies have shown that, all around the globe, people are walking faster and faster, this is translated into how fast-paced their society is!
In fact, Singapore came in top this round.

Reflection:
Quoting the article
"Pace around the world is 10% faster than ever before. That's not great for our health. As people speed up in their lives they are not eating properly, exercising or seeing friends and family. All these things can lead to all kinds of things, especially heart attacks."

People who walk fast are also more likely to speak and eat quickly, wear a watch and get impatient, he says. They don't like to sit still, sit in traffic or wait in queues.

The professor believes the increased pace of life is driven by technology and the way people are constantly in touch with each other. "

Indeed this phenomenon has its links to technology and health.
While,occuring in urban cities all around the world, this phenonmenon is becoming a global phenomenon
People in urban cities are having their lives "improved" by improved technologies which is aided by globalisation!
However, the increased efficiency may be taking its toll on our lives.
As mentioned by the professor, walking faster and living in a fast-paced society, we are risking our healths. They tend to eat less and not properly, do less exercise. This will all affect their physical health.
Additionally, mental health is affected. Getting impatient is a major characteristics of many and many can't wait in this society with the increased efficiency.
I think it is really obvious in our society, where people complain of waiting at bus stops, and may get all impatient and angry. Just yesterday, i heard a student swearing (a global culture, indeed) at the bus stop because his bus has not come yet. Indeed the report further confirmed how we walk faster and faster wanting to get to somewhere as quickly as possible, impatiently.
With technology, that increase our efficiency (aided by globalisation), our health is affected.

Wee Zhen YI 2C

10:44 PM