Health Workers Can Make a Difference

There is a tremendous historical legacy within the disciplines of public health, medicine and nursing in addressing some of the world’s biggest causes of ill health and mortality. Health professionals have also been prominent in the fight against social ills such as poverty, slavery, oppression and torture.

In both developed and developing countries, health workers are in a unique position to push for change. The Global Health Watch represents a call to all health workers to broaden and strengthen the global community of health advocates who are taking action on global ill-health and inequalities, and their underlying political and economic determinants.

Health workers can act as individuals; through their employing organisations and professional associations; through civil society organisations promoting health or advocating on behalf of the health of poor and vulnerable groups. Health workers can also play their part by directly supporting the struggles of communities to gain access to basic natural resources such as land, food and water as well as health care.

Health and public policy researchers have an important role to disseminate knowledge and information to civil society about the underlying determinants of ill health or the reasons why health care systems may not function or even exist.

A central aim of the Watch is to encourage national and regional groupings of health professionals, in collaboration with other NGOs and other sections of civil society, to organize their own health watches to monitor the actions of their governments, the private sector and the international community, and to challenge them as required. This is an important ingredient of the social mobilization required to promote political change in favour of improved health and reduced inequalities.

A Latin American Health Watch and an Indian Health Report are two such examples, which are available from the Global Health Watch website. Health workers in the developed world have a particular moral and professional duty to consider the health of people living in other countries. They can:

1. Encourage their organisations (hospitals, primary care clinics or academic units) to develop long-term ‘partnerships’ with counterpart organisations in poor countries. These partnerships would involve long-term support, including the transfer of material resources or skills and technology.
2. Campaign for changes in the policies of their governments and global institutions. Implement local purchasing, capital development and human resource policies that are ethical and sensitive to their impact on global health and the environment.