Health and Social care services

Hundreds of people including policy-makers, academics and civil society activists gathered for the Global Conference on Primary Health Care at Astana, Kazakhstan on 25-26 October. This was to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first International Conference on Primary Health Care, which was held in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan.

Last year the UN General Assembly officially established 12 December as an international day, making 12 December 2018 the first International Universal Health Coverage Day. For PSI, it provides an opportunity to reflect on the unacceptable health inequities between and within countries across the world. Considering the abundant wealth available to humankind and major advances made in healthcare delivery, this situation is indefensible.

In the week of 15- 19 November 2018, over a thousand delegates, including grassroots health activists, civil society organisations, academic institutions, NGOs and policymakers from across the world, including a delegation from Public Services International, gathered in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh for the fourth People’s Health Assembly (PHA-4).

In France, EHPADs are residential establishments for elderly dependent people, sometimes known as a retirement home. EHPADs house elderly people over the age of 60 who have lost some physical and/or mental faculties and are no longer able to live at home. There are 7,200 EHPADs and 10,000 home care services in France. They house or provide support for 1.4 million elderly people and employ more than 700,000 workers.

On 29-30 August 2018, the PSI Southern African Sub-regional Office hosted a Conference entitled “Towards a People’s National Health Insurance”. The conference was an initiative of PSI Young Workers, and brought together approximately 27 trade unions, civil society organisations and progressive academics to debate and wrestle with the National Health Insurance (NHI).

“Building walls, building fences, is not a solution […] the issue is how we can receive these people with fairness, with justice, with equity,” says PSI General Secretary, Rosa Pavanelli in her opening speech on the eve of the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in Marrakesh.