On October 25th, activists in more than 65 countries mobilized their communities for the first Global Day of Action for the Right to Health. The Day of Action was coordinated by the Article 25 Education Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group working in collaboration with more than 50 partners to build a global movement for the right to health. Last Saturday, public health and social justice activists held teach-ins, rallies, workshops, and candlelight vigils to raise awareness of health disparities across the globe and demand political action to address them. The day of action took place alongside a growing recognition of the devastation caused by global health inequity.
The name of the movement refers to Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document signed by world leaders at the United Nations stating that all people have rights to medical care and necessary social services. ”More than 400 million people have died of preventable global health inequities over the last 25 years,” said Amee Amin, Article 25’s Co-Founder and Campaign Director, “that’s more deaths than caused by even the largest wars in history. What we face is a global health crisis that needs a global movement to fix it.” The Millennium Development Goals, put out by the UN in 2000 to be completed by 2015, are being revisited as we approach 2015 and many of them have yet to be fulfilled. The day of action was to gain the attention of the international leaders who are meeting to discuss and draft the post-2015 Development Agenda. With more than 120 actions that took place around the world on October 25, Article 25 proved that accessibility to healthcare is an important issue, supported by real people globally, and that it needs to be fixed now.
One of the many things we can do as college students to help in the fight against the global health crisis is to raise awareness. This past Saturday, October 25, the AHANA Caucus, under UGBC, hosted an event for students and student organizations to come to O’Neill Plaza and pledge to demand the right to health for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, age, sexual orientation, or geographic location. Students also chalked their answers to “What does health mean to you?” This was the first step in bringing awareness to our own local BC community about health inequity.
To see photos from the Day of Action on October 25th at BC and also all over the world, click here
Photo Sources:
Monica Azmy