Philosophy
1st Sub-Sections
Advocacy for Global Health
HAI recognizes that the most important determinants of health consist of the basic conditions of daily life that promote health and well-being. Poverty for the poorest three billion of the world’s population who live on less than two dollars a day means that they do not have access to these basic needs – adequate food for their children, clean water, safe housing, education, quality health care. As a result, those same families have infants that die at rates 15 to 20 times that of wealthier populations, and mothers who are 80 to 100 times as likely to die in childbirth.
These inequities reflect a global economic system in which power structures maintain the advantage of the rich at the expense of the poor. Key economic and social policies at the international level, such as structural adjustment programs and unfair terms of trade, determine whether or not the people of poor countries will be able to develop to their full potential, or whether they will continue to struggle in a mire of deepening debt and weakened public institutions.
Effective advocacy for health necessarily involves addressing the power relations that determine the inequities in society - inequities that are the root cause of most of the premature deaths and illness in the world today. Inadequate access to quality health care is an important manifestation of this gap between today’s rich and poor. HAI’s advocacy thus focuses on efforts to:
- Raise awareness of the links between economic and political equity and health;
- Promote policy and structural changes that address widespread poverty and the systemic inequalities of opportunity that perpetuate it;
- Increase access to quality health care among disadvantaged populations, including the right to effective care and treatment for HIV/AIDS, with a focus on strengthening public sector programs.