Declaration of Barcelona - BCN-Salud!

DECLARATION OF BARCELONA-SALUD or: BCN. Health!

(corrected and definitive text in Castilian)

In Barcelona and convocad@s for the Foundation L'Alternativa, Alternative Esquerra Unida i, the Party of the European Left, and with the collaboration of “DEMPEUS per Salut Pública”, we have met to treat along a work day the topic “HEALTH AND SOCIAL DETERMINANTS IN EUROPE”. And to do it of collective form, adding up and attending on the diverse contributed experiences. With the will to homogenize the language and to come to a few proposals common and thought for, and from, the real and social Europe of which we are part.

The present text is the product, in brief and concise form, of the making of a wider work (the basic document of the Declaration of Barcelona) that it allows to offer to the hope to reach in Europe a better health and a major equity, an academic and scientific foundation. This document takes the title “The Public Health and the equity in health in Europe” and constitutes the rigorous base and in depth that bases the political claims that express themselves in this declaration.

The conclusions of the realized debate are the plot foundation for the present DECLARATION:

a) We could have evaluated, with a big coincidence of contributions of the different European geographical, cultural and historical territories, the present degradation situation as for the right to health, of loss of his quality and accessibility, and of increase of the inequality in health. Also we state the attack that supposes the flagrant or secret commercialization of the sanitary sector, the privatizations of the health services, and the more and more aggressive presence of the corporate interests and with lucre ends with the consequent loss of quality and equity with regard to the public services.

b) We demonstrate in the agreement and pursuit of the legislation and international and European regulations that promote the public, universal character and of quality of the promotion, the protection and the attentions to the health and of all his determinants: The Letter of Human rights of the United Nations, the Declaration of Alma-Ata, the Letter of Ottawa, the European Social Letter or the last recommendations of the proper WHO denouncing this commercialization across the Commission of Social Determinants of the Health (2008). Or the same Letter of Barcelona on “Instability and Health” that we make and edit in this city in June, 2007.

c) The health is determined by elements of economic, cultural and political character. The approach in health must be intersectorial and interdiscipline, following the council of the Commission of Social Determinants in Health of the WHO.

Saying this like frame and collective position, we claim the justice, the need and the viability of claiming the following points:

1. - The health, as the WHO defines it, is a social right and not goods. When interests confront or interpretations of the binomial “Health right - Health bought” the supremacy of the exercise of the right must prevail according to the law and in all the cases.

2. - We are so, treating the health like a right, a value, an essential social target and exigible that contributes the biggest protection, promotion, guarantee and care for all the persons. This is an inexcusable obligation of the governments. And this is particularly true and valid for Europe and, finally, for the social EU that we want to construct.

3. - We have stated an objective absence of information systems and the politics evaluation on the subject of health and from his determinants at level of the European territory. Today we have not a real tool of work, essential to realize a confirmed and finished "diagnosis" that allows to raise in the most suitable form a later action to scale of the EU. Especially if we consider the complexity added by the national heterogeneity. It is a basic need providing us with a System or European Observatory that offers the necessary guarantee and rigor, that is trustworthy, and that allows to monitor the health, the equity in health and the set of social determinants, that facilitates a high level of information about the most excellent factors, and that is realizes with full public and democratic control. From an instrumental instance of this type SÍ it will be possible to study and to evaluate the clear “Impact in the Health and the equity” of all the actions and the politics developed in the European ambience, an impact that it would be necessary to annex inexcusably in all the propositions, instructions and European regulations, be of the ambience of which they are.

4. - We claim also the guarantee to the protection of the health and the universal access to the sanitary services in all and in each of the countries and territories of the EU. It will allow a sanitary attention and worthy assistance for every person who needs it. This service has to come endorsed and led by the National and Public health System in every country – the only form that this way guarantees it – and has to be an integral and of quality.
The pathologies deserve special attention at present more prevalentes, the emergent illnesses, as well as the well-known and treated infrequent or insufficient illnesses. In these cases they will have to be tackled by more public means, they will include the assistance, the formation, the information and the investigation supported and guaranteed from the Public administrations.

5. - The financing has to be generated necessary from the diverse sources of the fiscal system of every country and of the EU. We deny that the health public sector should not be sustainable. As citizenship right has to receive also financing of a special way of the taxation of the revenues of the financial capital insufficiently aggrieved and especially protagonist and promoter of the neoliberal globalization.

6. - We push back frontalmente all the forms of commercialization of the sanitary attention under tricks across co-payments and complementarities, which are not another thing than re-payments.

7. - In the widest and valuable conception of the health, that one that defines it as a way of living that it is autonomous, united and joyful, and in harmony with the social and environmental environment, we declare ourselves for the necessary and pertinent interventions in each and everyone of his determinants, without forgetting the social factors that are, after all, the fundamental cause of the state of health and equity of a society. The employment, the work, the genre, the environment, the ethnic group, the nationality, the disability, the culture, the social protection, the social class, the town planning, or the housing, are the real definers of the public health, and this supposes the unavoidable need to treat all these topics from the transversalidad, the intersectorialidad and the biggest largeness participativa and transdisciplinaria. In this sense the WHO is evident when he asks and proposes the target of “finishing with the inequality in health in a generation” in the whole world, and also in Europe. We consider the inequities in health like a key indicator of the inequality and the social justice, a mark that we owe and can overcome.

8. - To develop these targets the social participation is essential. We refer to a new and active way of informing, from the popular power and the direct democracy, the corresponsabilización, the democratic respect to the differences, the commitment of transparence, with the pursuit and participation of the citizenship. The citizens and city dwellers of Europe, acting in the health and his determinants are the essential agent, the agent sanitary associate and of fundamental health, but they are even more, there are a key identity agent in the dynamic construction of the social Europe that nosotr@s we want and are constructing.

9. - The health has no borders, as they are had by the illnesses and the ecological and economic aggressions of the neoliberal politics either. It is the whole planet, globally, the one that will go out forward or will succumb in the company. The same way, in the field of the health we claim that realize the analyses and practices that assume these situations to international scale and do it with the priority of the justice, the equity and the solidarity between territories, but also between peoples and anyway between persons.

For all this we PROPOSE to move and use like tool, like a concrete instrument, this declarative text:

A) To European scale, making possible the procedure and the management adapted in the pertinent instances, and in particular in the European Parliament where we have the support shown by present Euro MPs of the GUE/EVN, which will be able to use it for the interpellation to the rest of Groups of the Chamber, for a leveling out to the rise of the conquests reached in all and in each of the European territories.

B) Diffusion at all the levels of classes, institutions and competent organizations on the subject of health. Be already professional, academic, or Local governments, regional, state and European.

C) To extend this Declaration (BCN.Salud) to the whole social base. To do diffusion, in the diverse languages of the EU between the whole citizenship for his knowledge, pronouncement and support if he considers it. Recovering a form it activates of society does “In Foot / DEMPEUS” from the autonomous empoderamiento and the democratic demand, exploring the mobilizations perspective at all the possible levels, studying the viability of promotion of Legislative Initiatives also from the population, recapturing those practices of implication of the Europe “partisan“, closing lines in the defense of the public character of the health and protecting from the fluttered piece of news parasitadoras, privatization and mercantilists of the current neoliberal and capitalist Europe.

Let's prune! Clear that we can, and also is our duty!

Barcelona, on February 27, 2010

To see the basic document of the Declaration of Barcelona “The Public Health and the equity in health in Europe” pulsating here!

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