HealthWrights: Articles

David Sanders, Pioneer of Health for All – as Remembered by David Werner When David Sanders died suddenly of a heart attack on August 30, 2019, it was a great loss. But his many friends and colleagues around the world can take heart that his passing did not leave a vacuum. To the contrary, David left a legion of fellow travelers around the world who, thanks to him, are today more strongly committed, better prepared, and have a greater sense of solidarity to continue the uphill struggle for health.

The Return of Health for All: Introduction (World Nutrition) Editor’s Note ‘Politics is medicine writ large’ said the politician, pathologist and founder of social medicine Rudolf Virchow. Next month the World Health Organization World Health Assembly (WHA) will convene. This and next month World Nutrition looks at the big picture that confronts us all, which WHA delegates from the 194 WHO member states need to perceive.

PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH AND LIBERATION IN LATIN AMERICA: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE by David Werner Prepared for the “Encuentro Pluricultural para la Salud y Bien Vivir” (Multicultural Encounter for Health and Living Well) at the first international assembly of The People’s Health Movement—Latin America Cuenca, Ecuador, October 7-11, 2013. “Hay hombres que luchan un día y son buenos. Hay otros que luchan un año y son mejores.

David Werner Interview: Speaking on Disability Empowerment with Japanese Disability Activists JSRPD: The title of the book “Nothing About Us Without Us” has become a catchphrase for many people with disabilities who are promoting the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. What do you think about this? Werner: The name of the book is taken from the slogan of the Independent Living Movement, which is “Nothing About Us Without Us.

Designing Wheelchairs in the Wild Wild West by David McMullin Editor’s note 2021: This essay has disappeared from the web. If you have a copy, or a working link, please send it to info@healthwrights.org. Publication Information  

A Brief Update on The Politics of Health in Mexico’s Sierra Madre: Increasing Poverty, Crime, and Violence in Rural and Urban Mexico The Ajoya Massacre For the last 37 years the village of Ajoya in the foothills of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental, has been the nucleus of the groundbreaking community-based health and rehabilitation innitiatives, projects Piaxtla and PROJIMO. These programs have been the source of the widely used handbooks Where There Is No Doctor, Helping Health Workers Learn, Disabled Village Children, and Nothing About Us Without Us.

Community Ownership: the Key to Sustainability David Werner, 2002 Author’s Misgivings in Writing this Chapter Although I gladly contributed to the previous two volumes in this series—Practicing Health for All and Reaching Health for All—it was with certain misgivings that I have agreed to write a chapter for the present volume, Sustaining Health for All. My first misgiving centers on the non sequitur of trying to “sustain” something that remains so far from being realized.

Ensuring the Necessary Resources for the Human Right to Health: National and International Measures Address by David Werner In the 1940s, the United Nations declared Health a Basic Human Right. The World Health Organization was created to help make that Right a reality. But during the next several decades, the Right to Health remained a distant dream for most of the world’s people.

Toward a Healthier World: Methods and Action for Change To give some impetus to this last day of the People’s Health Assembly, the Planning Committee asked me to give a so-called “inspirational address.” I guess they want me to say something hopeful, something optimistic, that motivates all of us to keep slogging away in the up-hill struggle for the healthier, more compassionate world we all dream of.

NEED TO WORK ON HEADERS Communication as if PEOPLE Mattered: Adapting Health Promotion and Social Action to the Global Imbalances of the 21st Century   DEMOCRACY as a prerequisite for a HEALTHY SOCIETY: Why Participation is Essential – and How it is Undermined by David Werner The well-being of an individual or community depends on many factors, local to global.

Breaking the Grip of Globalization on Poverty-Related Ill-Health: A Perspective from the North I should begin with an apology. I may not be the right person to speak on poverty and health in the North. First, my community health experience has mostly been in the South, mainly rural Mexico. Second, when in the North, I live in Palo Alto, California, heart of the Silicon Valley, the richest industrial complex on earth.

Seats That Enable: a Special Seating Seminar-Workshop in Culiacan, Mexico On 1-5 March 1999, Jean Anne Zollars, a physiotherapist and seating expert from New Mexico, facilitated a mini-course in “Special Seating” at Mas Validos, a Community-Based Rehabilitation programme, run largely by the parents of disabled children in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, Mexico. The course was followed by a two-day workshop held at PROJIMO, in the village of Ajoya about 160 kilometres away.

Health and Equity: Need for a People’s Perspective in the Quest for World Health David Werner Too often, in planning strategies to improve health, the people whose lives are most vulnerable have not been consulted. However, the Alma Ata Conference of 1978 was something of an exception. Among its participants were pioneers of community-based health care initiatives from several countries. They emphasized the need, in the pursuit of Health for All, to confront the underlying social, economic and political causes of poverty and poor health.

Giving Control Back to the People By David Werner, February 1999 Costly medicines can actually increase ill health, while people’s sense of control over their health care may still be the crucial factor in maintaining their well-being. The health workers were eager. They demonstrated their baby-weighing scheme, complete with animated health talks. Then, sitting down under a giant fig tree with the mothers and children of the village, they boasted of the dramatic fall in child deaths and reduction in malnutrition over the past two years.

Management of Long-Term Disability When I was first asked to address the topic of “Management of Long-Term Disability,” I had misgivings. As a person with a disability myself, “I am less interested in management” than in the never-ending struggle for acceptance, dignity and opportunity. Most disabled people seek liberation from prejudice, pity, over-protection, domination, cruelty and exclusion by society. As an advocate of CBR, I have misgivings too.

  Who Killed Primary Health Care? How the Ideal of ‘Health for All’ was Turned into the Reality of Worsening Health for the World’s Poor by David Werner Bolstad / Panos Pictures (http://www.panos.co.uk/).   An instructor of community-health workers in Kenya once told me about a sobering experience she had when she was visiting a rural health post.

The Hidden Costs of Free Trade: Mexico Bites the Bullet by David Werner and Jason Weston The financial and economic catastrophe that has befallen Mexico and its poor has brought into focus the call by the Zapatistas for a government that is characterised by honesty, accountability and responsibility to the people. ‘We thought we were on the path to the First World and suddenly something went wrong.

The Life and Death of Primary Health Care: Presented to the UN ‘Global Summit’ (1995) by David Werner In the Alma Ata Declaration on 1978, the world’s nations affirmed that both health and health care are basic human rights. But in recent years, for growing numbers of destitute people the possibilities of receiving adequate health services has been growing more remote.

The Politics of Health: An Interview with David Werner by Kathryn True Project Piaxtla is a small, community-based health program in the mountains of western Mexico, the Sierra Madre. Today it is controlled entirely by local villagers, some of whom have been working with the program since it began in 1964. The project serves more than 100 small villages, some of them located two days on mule back from the training and referral center in the village of Ajoya.

The Politics of Health: A Retrospective Project Piaxtla: A Villager-Run Health Program When the Piaxtla Project started in 1965, the “diseases of poverty” dominated the health scene. One in three children died before reaching the age of five, primarily of diarrhea and infectious disease combined with chronic undernutrition. Seven in ten women were anemic, and one in ten died during or after childbirth.

A Grassroots Struggle for Health and Rights in Rural Mexico by David Werner, 1994 Project Piaxtla is a rural health care initiative run by local villagers in western Mexico. Named after the local river, Piaxtla was started 30 years ago to serve a large, rugged, sparsely populated, mountainous region in the state of Sinaloa. The program is based in Ajoya, the largest village (population l,000) in its area of coverage.

Publication Information   A talk given at a seminar organized by: Medicine for the People Medical Aid for the Third World International People’s Health Council Dworp, Belgium, December 4, 1993 Author Contact: International People’s Health Council, Northern Region C/O Healthwrights c/o Jason Weston 3897 Hendricks Road Lakeport CA 95453 USA   info@healthwrights.org The Life and Death of Primary Health Care or The McDonaldization of Alma Ata A talk by David Werner

Appropriate Technology: People with Disabilities in the Struggle for Social Change David Werner I WOULD LIKE to speak to you not so much as an educator, an author, a health-worker, or in the other roles that I am best-known for … but rather as a disabled person. For we disabled people, like other disadvantaged groups, need a louder voice in the discussions and decisions that affect us.

Pushing Drugs in a Free Market Economy: What the Pharmaceutical, Tobacco, and Narcotics Trade Have in Common by David Werner The American Medical Students Association has chosen a daunting theme for this year’s annual convention. The rampant misuse of drugs—both legal and illicit—has become a major and growing threat to health: of individuals, of communities, and of society as a whole.

Juan: Drug Smuggler Turned Therapist I am going to tell you the story of my life. When I was five years old, my mother died. From then on, my father took charge of our family and life went on. But when I was 10 my father died too. That’s when I lost the rudder to my life. I suffered until I was 13.

La Guerra Antidrogas Por David Werner Traducción: Delia Juárez G. En este artículo, el problema del narcotráfico se aborda no como un hecho aislado y a combatir como un asunto particular, sino en toda su conexión con el problema global económico, social y cultural que viven México y América Latina. La droga es un árbol con fluidos invisibles y ramificaciones complejas; no puede separarse, por caso, de una cuestión como los derechos humanos o de otra como la deuda externa latinoamericana.

GLOBAL ILLS AND POPULAR STRUGGLES IN ECUADOR by David Werner In September, 2000 David Werner visited Ecuador to help facilitate two very different activities. One was a three day Regional Forum for the Health of the People, held in Cuenca and organized by Dr. Arturo Quizhpe and the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Cuenca. The other was a six day Regional Training Course in Community Based Rehabilitation, held in Quito and organized by Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM).

Disabled People in International Development by David Werner NOTE: Dr. David Werner visited Angola in September of 1989. The following is a summary of his article “Visit to Angola” (see Newsletter #22). A visitor to the capital of Luanda is immediately struck by the many disabled men, women, and children hobbling along with the help of wooden poles or crutches.

Project Projimo: A Program For and By Disabled People by David Werner My main interest is in innovative community program where disabled persons themselves or members of their families take the lead in management, provision of services and decision making. My interest in program that are run by and help empower disabled persons comes from my own personal bias, for I, myself, have a physical disability.

Short Quotes by David Werner on Community-Based Rehabilitation In the July 1989 issue of “Independent Living,” David Werner, a disabled community organizer and rehabilitation expert, author of Where There Is No Doctor and Disabled Village Children among others, describes several innovative examples of Third World projects run by disabled people themselves producing rehabilitation services and assistive devices as income generating projects.

Health For No One by the Year 2000: The High Cost of Placing ‘National Security’ Before Global Justice To formulate an effective strategy for improving health and survival, we must first reexamine the causes that lead to the present high levels of sickness and death—especially among vulnerable groups. We must follow the chain of causes all the way to its source, even if its final link frames a mirror in which we begin to rediscover ourselves—our value judgments, our lifestyle, our government—through the eyes of the world’s dispossessed and hungry.

Before and Beyond Objectives and Goals: The Vision by David Werner Summary: It is not the stated goals and objectives of a community program that make it vital or viable—but rather the vision, unwritten and evolving, shared by the members of the program and community as they change and evolve together. —D.W. In the planning and evaluation of health programs, often a great deal of discussion is devoted to “objectives” and “goals.

Empowerment and Health Talk by David Werner Introduction: The Importance of Empowerment How important is empowerment to achieving ‘health for all’? Extremely important! In reality, health depends more on empowerment of and by the people than it does on health care per se. Yet, when I was invited to speak on ‘empowerment’ I had misgivings. For when words become jargon they lose their power.

Home Remedies Excerpts from “Home Cures and Popular Beliefs” from the book “Where There is No Doctor,” published as a health guide by The Voluntary Health Association of India. Please do note however, that home cures are effective only in mild diseases. Always treat a serious illness with modern medicine. Topics: Asthma Cough and Cold

Public Health, Poverty and Empowerment—A Challenge by David Werner Those of you receiving a degree in public health are faced with an unusual—and in some ways paradoxical—challenge. For as we all know, in today’s world the biggest obstacles to ‘health for all’ are not technical, but rather social and political. Widespread hunger and poor health do not result from total scarcity of resources, or from overpopulation, as was once thought.

The Village Health Worker—Lackey or Liberator? by David Werner   Throughout Latin America, the programmed use of health auxiliaries has, in recent years, become an important part of the new international push of ‘community oriented’ health care. But in Latin America village health workers are far from new. Various religious groups and non-government agencies have been training promotores de salud or health promoters for decades.

What We Learned from María Introduction Men are cruel, but men are kind. —Rabindranath Tagore Those of us whom solitude entices to peer into the night skies of our own being, and thereby into Being in general, are often dumbfounded by the didactic irony of fate. It is as if “blind” luck and “pure” chance conspired with our human sensibilities to pursue paths as clear yet inexplicable as evolution.

Primary Health Care and the Temptation of Excellence No hay bien sin pero, ni mal sin gracia. [There’s nothing good without a drawback, nor bad without some saving grace.] —an old Mexican saying For better and for worse, the Ajoya Clinic has come a long way since 1965, when it began as a few boxes of medicines and bandages on the front porch of the casa of blind Ramón, and its staff was no more than an ex-schoolteacher trying hard to play medic, assisted by a handful of over-eager village children.