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Edited by Deborah Eade and introduced by Eleanor Hill
The achievement of Health for All by the Year 2000 has been the declared goal of the international community for almost 20 years. The 1978 Alma Ata Declaration acknowledged that health and well-being depend as much on social justice and community participation as on technical or medical interventions. Yet, with deepening economic disparity within and between nations, and with near-universal cuts in public spending on health services, millions of people are denied access to even basic care. Community participation of reduced to paying for treatment, a cruel parody of the right to participate in shaping health and social-welfare policies which was affirmed two decades ago.
In this collection, Patricia Diskett and Patricia Nickson take a critical look at the financing of health care from the perspective of poverty-focused NGOs, while Chris Roys and Hilary Hughes variously explore the issues of policy and practice posed by the challenge of HIV/AIDS. Sundari Ravindran and Anne LaFond consider the social and cultural constraints on health-seeking behaviour, particularly in the case of women, while Teresa Cresswell describes how deprived urban communities in the United Kingdom took practical steps to shape a healthier environment for themselves.
