Ilina Sen speech for Binayak Sen’s award highlights India’s food, nutrition inequities

“In India, nutrition surveys of the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau have shown that over 33 % of the population have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 18.5, considered to be the minimum level for less than starvation standards. Translated to demography, this means that over 400 million people are exposed to near starvation conditions. To add to this catastrophic situation, we are confronted now with a new set of crises. Between 1990 and 2005, the daily per capita availability of foodgrains has fallen from 510 grams to 438. World food prices have risen, and the concentration of land ownership in a few hands has intensified.”

– Acceptance Speech for Jonathan Mann Award: Ilina Sen, Awards Banquet of the Global Health Council,
Washington, DC, May 29, 2008.

Campaign to free Binayak Sen: Chennai events on May 29

 

Through
ATTAM, PATTAM and KUTHU,
Artist for Human Rights,

voice against
THE UNJUST DETENTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

When: 29th may, 2008, 6 pm
Where: Chandralekha Center (junction of 5th avenue and 6th avenue)
No. 1, Elliots Beach road, Besant Nagar, ch-90
 
Performances by:
Chennai Kalai Kuzhu, Kanchi Makkal Mandram, Pudhiya Thor.
Dr. Binayak Sen is being conferred the prestigious Johnathan Mann award on the 29th of May for his dedicated service in providing medical care to indigenous people of chattisgarh and his committed struggle against Human Rights violations. But Dr. Sen would not be personally receiving the award because the STATE has IMPRISONED HIM.
The government of Chattisgarh has imprisoned human rights defenders like Binayak Sen and Ajay T.G and others for voicing against the government sponsored armed militias and the serious violations of human rights in the state. Human Rights defenders across the country have been targets of the STATE and are being imprisoned under draconian laws that allow for detention without trial. It is imperative that we raise our voices against the state of human rights in our country.
 Let us on the 29th of may join together
·        To celebrate the conferring of the award on Dr. Binayak Sen
·        Voice against the violation of human rights by the STATE.
·  Demand the immediate release of Dr. Binayak Sen and other Human rights activist who are unjustly incarcerated.
 For further information contact Rakhal 9940246089, Venkat: 9884706531
CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF Dr. BINAYAK SEN

Protest held in Chennai for Dr. Binayak Sen’s release

A well-attended public protest was held outside Chennai’s Memorial Hall, opposite the Madras Medical College demanding the unconditional release of Dr. Binayak Sen. The meeting was attended by people from various walks of life, including unorganised workers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and civil rights campaigners. The protest, held along with other similar events worldwide, marked the first year of Dr. Sen’s incarceration by the BJP government in Chhatisgarh.

Pamphlets were distributed to members of the public by the activists giving a profile of Dr. Binayak Sen and demanding his unconditional release. Several speakers highlighted the draconian approach of rulers of the day, the BJP state governments in particular, towards civil rights.

A glimpse of the Chennai gathering can be seen in this video clip:

 

 

India children’s health ‘ignored’

(Editor’s Note: So why is the government arresting Dr Binayak Sen, a children’s doctor?)
BBC, 8 May 2008

More than half of Indian children under the age of five do not get the health care they need, according to a report by Save the Children.

It ranks India alongside Ghana when it comes to providing basic health care to its children under five years of age.

The annual report looks at whether developing countries are delivering health care effectively to children.

It found the Philippines was performing best with almost 69% of children able to get access to health care.

Ethiopia ranks last - only 16% of children under five get health care when they need it.

‘Basic measures’

The report, called State of the World’s Mothers, says girls die at much higher rates in India than most countries.

Although India has cut child its mortality rate by 34% since 1990, Indian girls are 61% more likely than boys to die between the ages of one and five.

Inequity of health care among male and female children is responsible for this situation, the report says.

The report says experts predict that over 60% of the nearly 10 million children who die every year could be saved by delivering basic health services through a health facility or community health worker.

“A child’s chance of reaching its fifth birthday should not depend on the country or community where it is born,” said Jasmine Whitbread, Save the Children’s chief executive.

“We need to do a better job of reaching the poorest children with basic health measures like vaccines, antibiotics and skilled care at childbirth,” she said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7389283

“About a jailed doctor”: Anand Patwardhan on Binayak Sen

The Times of India carried an opinion piece by Anand Patwardhan on Dr. Binayak Sen, on Sunday. Given the generally lukewarm response of the mainstream media to Dr. Sen’s imprisonment and all the connected issues, this piece is encouraging.

Medical camp in support of imprisoned doctor

The Hindu -26th April 2008

Bangalore, Staff reporter

Instead of sloganeering and rhetoric, groups of doctors across the country hit upon the idea of organising free medical camps to express their opposition against the imprisonment of human rights activist Binayak Sen.

To highlight what they termed an unfair arrest, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as People’s health movement and Medico Friends Circle organised one such camp at LR Nagar in Koramangala here on Friday.

Dr. Sen, vice-president of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), was arrested at Bilaspur in Chattisgarh in May 2007, on the charge of being linked to naxalites. Dr. Sen is known for his work among the poor. He is credited with setting up a unique 400 bed hospital run by a workers cooperative in a backward area of Chattisgarh.

Two of the six doctors at the camp, N. Devadasan and his wife Rupa, both public health specialists, were associates of Dr Sen. Dr Devadasan is a fellow alumni from CMC, Vellore.

Deprived of own freedom Binayak Sen wins global rights award

PRESS RELEASE 23 APRIL 2008

COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF DR BINAYAK SEN, NEW DELHI

Jailed pediatrician, humanitarian worker and civil rights activist Dr Binayak Sen  has become the first South Asian ever to win the prestigious 2008 Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights.

The Global Health Council  (www.globalhealth.org) is the world’s largest membership alliance of public health organizations and professionals working to improve health and save lives among the poor. The Council serves and represents public health organizations and professionals working in more than 140 countries on six continents.

Keeping in view Dr Sen’s current status as a prisoner of conscience, the Global Health Council, along with other international health organisations has  requested Indian authorities to find the means to allow Dr Sen to receive his award in person in Washington, DC on May 29th, 2008, at the 35th Annual International Conference on Global Health.
In a letter to the President of India, the Prime Minister of India, and the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Dr. Nils Dulaire, President of the Global Health Council, has written:
“ We wish to be clear: it is not our intent to interfere with the judicial process. We simply request that this doctor’s good works and highly regarded reputation as a man of science and service, and his international following, serve as guarantee of his obligation to return to India to participate in a just and fair judicial process after the awards ceremony, if his case is not resolved sooner.

The world is watching this case. Some have expressed concern that it might represent a dwindling respect for civil liberties in India. We believe, however, that allowing Dr. Sen to attend the award’s ceremony would send a strong signal internationally that would help to restore faith that India and its states are indeed committed to fairly addressing this and other cases related to civil conflicts and civil liberties.  Dr. Binayak Sen’s travel to the United States for this purpose would pose no threat to the security of Chhattisgarh or the integrity of the Indian judicial system.

Please consider finding the means to allow him to receive his award in person.”

US Healthcare: Evidence of a flawed model

Many middle class members have a simplistic, rosy view of US Healthcare. It is to this group, which also has significant purchasing power, that the private health insurance business is addressing its messages in India. The outcome is both negative and paradoxical in societal terms: the government is effectively withdrawing from expanding tertiary care for symptoms of chronic diseases, while for-profit institutions are fattening themselves on gullible citizens.

For all its perceived superiority among the middle classes, is the US system delivering the best results?

The most recent revelations point otherwise, as this excerpt from a story in the New York Times shows.

“It’s very troubling that there are parts of the wealthiest country in the world, with the highest health spending in the world, where health is getting worse,” said Majid Ezzati, the lead author and an associate professor of international health at Harvard. It is a phenomenon, he added, “unheard of in any other developed country.”

Read the full story here. The full paper published by the Public Library of Medicine is here.

Clearly, Professor Ezzati is making a comparison with the rest of the developed world that believes in state-supported, total healthcare, with demonstrably better results.

Will our policymakers take note?

ga

BHOPAL ACTIVISTS SHOW SOLIDARITY WITH DR BINAYAK SEN

PRESS RELEASE 16 April 2008
In a show of solidarity with the campaign for the release of Dr Binayak Sen, a delegation of activists representing the Bhopal gas tragedy survivors visited the second Free Binayak Sen Medical Camp in New Delhi on 13 April.

Speaking to members of the Jai Hind community, where the medical camp was organized, Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action  talked about Dr Sen’s important contribution to public health in Chattisgarh and his work on human rights. Dr Sen, renowned internationally for his humanitarian work, is currently detained by the Chattisgarh government on false charges of  aiding the underground Maoist movement.

“To arrest a person of  Dr Sen’s record of public service, non-violent social work and deep commitment to the poor is a complete travesty of justice” said Satinath Sarangi. He offered to hold medical camps in Bhopal in support of Dr Sen’s release through the Sambhavana clinic, which caters to over 30,000 people still suffering from the after effects of the gas disaster of 3 December 1984.

Other activists from Bhopal talked about the problems facing the survivors of  the world’s worst industrial disaster. Around 300 such survivors, who have walked over 800 kilometers from Bhopal to New Delhi, are in the national capital to highlight their demands for setting up a Special Commission on Bhopal to address various issues affecting local people and to prosecute Dow Chemicals which inherited the criminal and other liabilities of Union Carbide, the US multinational responsible for the Bhopal gas tragedy.

At the Free Binayak Sen Medical Camp over 150 patients from the Jai Hind community were treated for a variety of ailments – many of them linked to low nutrition, poor quality of drinking water and sanitation available in the area. The camp was organized by the Delhi based Sajha Manch and its associated organisations as part of a  nationwide initiative for the release of popular health and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen.

“Training local youth in basic principles of medical care will be helpful to them as well as the community in general ” said Dr Jacob Puliyal, one of the doctors volunteering his services for the camp. Doctors participating in the Free Binayak Sen Medical Camps  have offered to provide such training to youth from the Jai Hind community and this is expected to commence in May this year.

The initiative, of holding monthly Free Binayak Sen Medical Camps for the urban and rural poor, in cities and towns around the country – is meant to raise public awareness about Dr Sen’s detention under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and call for his unconditional release.

The camps are also part of an effort to take forward Dr Sen’s innovative public health work to new areas and highlight the issues of nutrition, child health and the link between socio-economic rights and health. According to a  recent report by the news channel IBN/CNN over 6000 children die every day due to malnutrition in India, a situation worse than prevailing in sub-Saharan Africa.

Other Free Binayak Sen Medical Camps are planned among urban poor communities for April in Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore and Kolkata.

For further information contact:
Dunu Roy, New Delhi             qadeeroy@vsnl.com Ph: 9910687627
Satya Sivaraman, New Delhi satyasagar@gmail.com Ph: 9818514952
Dr Rakhal Gaitonde, Chennai subharakhal@gmail.com Ph: 9940246089
Dr Punyabrata Gun, Kolkata shramajibiswasthya@yahoo.co.in Ph: 9830922194
Dr N.Devadasan, Bangalore deva@devadasan.com Ph: 9448491355

FREE DR BINAYAK SEN CAMPAIGN

FREE BINAYAK SEN MEDICAL CAMP IN DELHI

PRESS RELEASE, 16 March 2008

Over 125 men, women and children attended the first Free Binayak Sen Medical Camp held in the Jai Hind basti, a colony of ragpickers and domestic workers in New Delhi.

They were treated for ailments ranging from anemia and urinary tract infections among women to respiratory infections and vitamin deficiencies among children. Free medicines were handed out to patients and there are plans to train local youth in paramedical work and take up regular community health activities in the colony.

The camp was organized by the Sajha Manch and Bal Vikas Dhara as part of a nationwide initiative for the release of popular health and human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen. Dr Sen was controversially arrested in May last year on false grounds of having links with Maoists in Chattisgarh and is currently lodged in Raipur jail.

“Most of the problems among the people treated are related to poor nutrition and low quality of water” said Dr Amod, one of the doctors volunteering his services for the camp.

The menfolk in the Jai Hind colony, which has over 1500 families mostly migrants from Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, work as ragpickers bring the garbage from nearby residential areas for sorting back to their homes. This contributes to the lack of unhygienic conditions in the area.

While local organizations, like Bal Vikas Dhara, have over the years organized the community and wrested major concessions from the local municipality such as free provision of drinking water, health check ups and vaccination for children there are many problems that remain. For example there are no toilets for this large community of over 10,000 people, no electricity connections and also no supply of rations from the public distribution system.

“We are taking up these issues one by one with the authorities but still there is a lot of discrimination against rag pickers” says Subal, an organizer with Bal Vikas Dhara.

The entire colony is located on private land, controlled by some kind of land mafia that rents it out to waste contractors who are the ones who own all the houses in which the ragpickers live. Each ragpicker gets a house and a bicycle free from different contractors in return for which they have to sell (at low prices) the waste they collect every day.

The initiative, of holding monthly Free Binayak Sen Medical Camps for the urban and rural poor, in cities and towns around the country – is meant to raise public awareness about Dr Sen’s detention under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and call for his unconditional release.

The camps are also part of an effort to take forward Dr Sen’s innovative public health work to new areas and highlight the issues of nutrition, child health and the link between socio-economic rights and health. India has one of the worst health indicators in the world, even lower than that of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the areas of infant and maternal mortality.

Other camps are planned for March in Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore and Kolkata.

For further information contact:
Dunu Roy, New Delhi qadeeroy@vsnl.com Ph: 9910687627
Satya Sivaraman, New Delhi satyasagar@gmail.com Ph: 9818514952
Dr Rakhal Gaitonde, Chennai subharakhal@gmail.com Ph: 9940246089
Dr Punyabrata Gun, Kolkata shramajibiswasthya@yahoo.co.in Ph: 9830922194
Dr N.Devadasan, Bangalore mail@phindia.org Ph: 080-26645232