IPHU Community

Activists for the #Health4All from movements in dozens of corners around the globe gather together in this collective International People's Health University. It's been already two weeks together and we just completed the first module: Health: an intersectional approach.

Here we go with a quick overview to the debates and reflections of these past days.

In the #IPHUbcn2021 we approach health from an intersectional perspective 

Because exclusion from healthcare, health inequalities, precarisation of healthcare workers, do not belong to an isolated bubble: they are a consequence and a symptom of an interlinked system of dominations and oppresion.

As Anuj Kapilashrami explains, recalling Audrey Lorde, there is no single issue struggle, because we don't live single issue lives. Otherwise, why in the UK healthcare workers with a migration background had a higher rate of deaths and hospitalisations due to Covid-19?

Because they lived in underprivileged neighbourhoods, were helping in solidarity networks, had families to take care of, more precarious works with less decision making power, and therefore capacity to protect themselves. And we could go on for long...

Because discrimination in healthcare has a gender bias, women do not take the priority to go for medical care, and non-normative people tend to avoid going to the doctor, not willing to go through usual humiliations and discriminations. (Adsa Fátima)

Because the most precarious work in healthcare with low level of authority in hierarchies is highly feminised. (EPSU)

Because the work management and organisation in healthcare environments is strongly masculinised and this is a crucial element to transform. (Jas La Cabecera)

Because we all know, but we don't know yet how to break the circle, that wars (the worst attempt to health) are a business and the anihilation of human rights in the Middle East is supported by western regimes because of financial interests. (Hani Serag)

Because wars and trade agreements which empoverish so many communities, force people to migrate, and barriers to asylum and welcome cause death, healthcare discrimination and work exploitation. 

Because, like we all know, when privileges are at stake, the system is relentless (and destroys as many lives as needed).

Because privatisation of health, pushes the "braindrain" from the global south to the global north.

And, within all this, we understand that there is an attack against "good life", the true health defended from indigenous communities, and which we should embrace. (Irene)

That we have the responsibility to defend our environment from corporative extractivism, because health, rivers, forests, are a right to be defended.

And that we have the responsibility not just to be mobilised, but to allow to understand, convince those who are not mobilised that rights belong to everyone, and need to be guaranteed by everyone. (Blanca) 

Therefore it is not about the "yellow container for the plastics", it is about a political mobilisation against exploitation and domination: intersectional, yes, and that is why we need to make our struggles intersectional too. (Martina y Blanca)

Build collective mobilisation that incorporate, since the begining and within its methods, our values. With a true transversality and inclusion. With care, internal solidarity and with a transformative and horizontal regard. (Hani, Guillem)

That we shall innovate, not stay on unique paradigms, not look for changes just within the system, but we shall contribute and make the horizons of mobilisations and the mobilised grow (Zak, Samer)

Thus, building health would be building "good life", in a collective, solidary way, and that we should confront, knowing that despite good times are not coming, we need to keep standing, together, and building community. (Erika)

The right to health is everyone's struggle and a struggle for everyone!